Personal firewalls..

Anyone got any recommendations?

Is Zonealarms still good ?

Are there any free firewalls out there with intruder detection built in ?

I hear IPCOP is good ... but I lack the hardware for it..

Wait for XP SP2. Or use zone alarm.

what do you want it for?

are you behind a router?

if your using a router your really dont need one

Im about to get woosh ...

I had been on jetstart previously but my router had a built in FW ..

and as far as free Anti Virus sw goes - does anyone rate AVG ?

Zone alarm is shit. Will periodically shaft your connection and ask you to ring your isp.

I've found AVG to be very good for my own use

as for firewalls, a linux box with iptables well configured is all good

smoothwall is pretty good as far as linux goes - i used to use nortons internet security but i dont see the need anymore i just have a router.

just because you have a router does not indefinately protect you from hackers, its still a good idea to have a firewall just for that little bit of extra protection good for keeping the ports closed when your not using them and also alerting you if something is trying to access them

They cant get to my ports unless theyre on my network so theres no point hiding or closing them.

The only benefit to having a firewall is if i got a virus and i closed the ports for it to get out but im pretty careful and dont see the need anymore.

i have a firewall but its just mcafee, i figure if someone wants into my computer bad enough then they are going to get in. Its pretty much protected from most things though with my router
Once my fileserver computer is up though that is gonna have the extreme protection

they are utterly pointless if you're using a router...

Pervert, that's completely untrue and misleading.

All a router does it forward packets from the Internet to you, so using a router offers almost zero protection. If your router has a firewall that you've turned on, then it will only forward packets on ports you've specified, but these ports are still vunerable to attack by things like buffer overflows.

No a router wont forward packets unless you tell it to.

thats why you have to use passive mode for ftp.

a firewall on a router will effecitively only stop outbound packets.

I have the DynaLink RTA 220 router/firewall. By default it's set to let all packets to any port though to the PC. Active and passive mode ftp both work perfectly.

The firewalls job is more to stop incomming packets than outgoing ones, but it's able to do both - you can set it on a per-port basis. If all it did was stop outgoing packets what would the point of a firewall be? Its main job is to stop unwanted packets getting to your PC.

Tiny Personal Firewall, version 2, was good... if you could be arsed setting it up, given that it starts out with basically no rules.

Cant download it from the maker any more though, so finding it can be a trick... i still have... filename is pf2.exe

Actually, I have setup files for a few, though I havent used them.. I seem to remember a few people telling me Sygate was decent...

Theres 5 computers on my network which one is it going to forward it to? all of them?

are you using it with a usb cable? in which case you are using it as a modem not a router.

I assume you're talking to me...



Good point. I'm not too strong on networking, but I guess unless an outward connection was made first, the router will just drop the connection or packets.



Ethernet.

Yes if a computer opens a port then the router will forward return packets to it - just like a firewall has to open a port when you want to use it.

So again a firewall on a computer behind a router will only have an effect on outgoing stuff.