What popular firewalls can we considered similar to Filseclab Personal Firewall?

[sweater]

:)
I have just installed the latest Filseclab Firewall on my pc… and like others I doubt if this is really a good firewall (coz it’s not tested yet by gkweb). You know what I mean… scores really has a big impact on any products. On its default out of the box settings it didn’t even pass on my own leaktests and stealth tests. But, one thing that attracts my attention on this firewall was its built-in rules to block some Trojans, viruses and worms. But still, isn’t enough for me if I can really trust or consider this firewall to be one of the best. :P ;D

[fannymites]

I used Filsecab for a little while and with it's default settings passed every firewall test I tried with full stealth though it seems to show the odd open port for some people with default settings so I'm not sure what's going on there.
It also failed almost every leak test I tried, but then I don't use firewall alone to pass any leaktests anyway so that wouldn't bother me.
The thing that made me remove it and go back to kerio was that I was unable to set local port ranges like I can in kerio, though this only seems to be important if you use p2p.
Personally I liked it and it would probably be my second choice after kerio for a freeware firewall.

[Arup]

Add free Antihook with Filseclab and it will block any or all leak tests.

[chocarama]

-{ Quote: "Add free Antihook with Filseclab and it will block any or all leak tests." }-

I tried exactly this but Antihook slowed my system down too much. I lost 'crispness' of response.

And by running Task Manager I was able to see that sometimes Antihook caused six or seven seemingly-unrealted applications all to use cpu to such an extent that my machine (Athlon 2000+ with 768 MB memory) just ground to a complete halt for 30 seconds or more.

Antihook gets good reviews but I can't afford the loss of power it causes. :-(

[fannymites]

System Safety Monitor passes all leaktests I've tried except dnstester but this can be passed by setting per application dns rules in rules based firewalls, not sure about non rules based (I think zone alarm passes it).
System Safety Monitor doesn't slow down my comp at all.
Did you try AntiHook in fingerprint mode or normal mode? Fingerprint mode seemed to slow things down a lot more for me.

[rawr]

If you're looking for a rule-based firewall like Filseclab, try Outpost or Kerio.

[Arup]

Antihook is the least obtrusive among its class, never slowed my system down in any way and I have tested it all.

About the closest thing to Filseclab is Kerio 2.15 but then it is old and sorely in need of an update, also has an insignificant fragmented packet bypass issue. However it has far lower memory and CPU consumption compared to Filseclab. Sadly Kerio 2.15 is a hit and run situation, works on some systems, BSODs on others.

[Kerodo]

I have used AntiHook here with great success, never any system slowdowns in either fingerprint mode or normal mode. In fact, never a problem at all.

SSM 2.0 beta 1, on the other hand, appears to be a complete POS so far as I can tell. Tried it yesterday, and nothing but freezes, and problems. Total nonsense..

So, in my opinion, AntiHook makes a great compliment to any firewall like Kerio 2 or Filseclab. Worked well with both when I tried them here..

[fannymites]

I don't really know why Antihook slows down some comps and not others.
Chocorama's specs are better than mine but I wouldn't say it slows my computer down enough to affect responsiveness, it slows down when using fingerprint mode but only just noticable.
It may have to do with what else is running.
Personally, I prefer Antihook over SSM. SSM does tend to cause quite a few freeze-ups, particularly if you are running things like objectbar, rklauncher and a lot of other customizing type programs.
I've been running kerio 2.15 for a long time and despite trying out more up to date firewalls every so often, I keep going back to kerio.
I've tried SSM about 3 times over the past year and again for the past few days but I still get some problems with it and i'm about to uninstall and go back to Antihook. I sometimes feels that SSM causes more problems with my comp than malware would.
Antihook and Kerio 2.15 seem to be a very effective combination and along with avast! antivirus I've never had a single virus infection or any other suspicious activity.

[Arup]

AH+Kerio 2.15+CHX+Avast was my favorite combo for a long time till BSOD forced me to get rid of Kerio 2.15 and the closest rule making ability I find in a freebie is Filseclab.

[fannymites]

Does it bother anyone in this thread using filseclab that you are unable to set local port ranges in the rules?
I've had conflicting information about how important this is.

[Arup]

The reason you can't set ranges is that some of the port range would clash with the built in Trojan blocking rule port ranges, this is my assumption, I would love to have the range as in Kerio 2.15 rules but still, Filseclab rule making, especially the pop up has a nice interface and creating individual rules for apps are quite easy.

[Notok]

FilSecLab firewall is a good one for a freebie. It won't pass leaktests, but as mentioned by just about everyone here you can use something like Anti-Hook, ProcessGuard, etc, to defeat those. Sygate has built in trojan blocking (blocks ports and terminates the process using them), but it doesn't contain spyware filtering rules like FileSecLab.. but that could be achieved by using Proxomitron with Kye-U's filterset.. I believe Online Armor will have more of that soon as well. (The only thing is that you don't want to use Proxomitron with Sygate, because Sygate will apparently let anything use Proxo without question.)

Personally I like Look'n'Stop firewall (with beta drivers & service) the best. It may not have specific trojan rules, but it has unbeatable outbound protection, and Phant0m's ruleset is quite thorough, and you could always add the trojan ports yourself, then add pop-up or sound alerts when those ports are attempted. I also use Online Armor with that, run my browser with DropMyRights, and (of course) harden my system. The protection may not be quite the same (takes a different approach than what is discussed here), but the overall security is quite good. You could go for the Safe'n'Sec beta as well (if they're still accepting new testers, I'm not sure), ProcessGuard, Anti-Hook, Prevx 1 beta, DefenseWall beta, or any number of things if you wanted to.. I guess the question is; what do you really want out of your security setup?