Free software firewalls with IPv6 support

Hi,

I'm running Windows Vista Business SP-2/ Windows 7 Pro on some computers/laptops at home. I have the Windows Firewall turned on for all these computers.

However, I just wanted to experiment a little bit with some free software firewalls, but one of the requisites I would like the firewall to meet is true support [ traffic filtering ] for IPv6.

Does anyone know which free firewalls truly support IPv6 out of the box [ Vista/7 ] ?


Thanks in advance.



Carlos

 

I think Latest Pc tools firewall support true IPV6 on x86 and x64.
Also Latest ZA Free.

Rules.

 

Personally I'd stay with the Windows 7 firewall, to my mind it has the best support for IPv6 of any of the free firewalls and most of the paid for 'personal' firewalls.

That aside, as mentioned by 'Rules' PCTools has reasonable support as does Outpost. Zone Alarm does support IPv6, however, last time I looked IPv6 support could be enabled by checking the box highlighted above, but beyond that there is little one can do by way of configuration.

L 'n' S supports IPv6, however, I don't believe it's free. Comodo have promised support for the stack, in an upcoming version, although I have no idea when that will be released.

I'm not sure about any others but I'm sure other posters will be ably to enlighten you further.

Other than that, buy a good router and replace the firmware with something like dd-wrt, OpenWrt, Tomato or Oleg and use the inbuilt iptables to create your IPv4/IPv6 rules.

 

Hey,

Thank you both for your replies. Very appreciated.

I've already tested ZA free and as far as I can see it's a little heavy on system resources [ I mean I/O, not system memory since I've got 4GB RAM ]. Furthermore, it installs an unwanted toolbar supposedly to fight spyware. I wasn't counting on that.

Anyway, I removed it and I'm now testing PCTools one and it seems kind of light on resources. I will post new info as I keep testing it.

I don't know if L 'n' S supports Win Vista and Win 7 since I no longer run Win XP at home and, here at Wilders people seem to be bound in a long marriage to XP.

What really surprised me was the lack of support for IPv6 by some firewall vendors like Comodo and others. It's shocking because Win Vista has been around since November 2006 and Win 7 was released in October last year.
This lack of support has some similarities with the lack of support for 64-bit OS that some other software companies have but well, that's another story.


Thanks for your help, though.


Regards,


Carlos

 

At install you can simply uncheck it and pof the toolbar is magically gone....
P.S. Actually even after, you will find a ZA toolbar in the list of programs you can remove.

 

It seems that Outpost Firewall 7 has become free so it can be added as an option regarding IP 6 support ,though on some W7 sytems IP 6 enabled along Outpost may give high CPU load on svchost.

 

Tomato does not support IPv6.
If your going to flash your router stick with DD-WRT or Open-WRT.

Online Armor does not support IPv6

So far firewalls with IPv6 support:
PC Tools
Outpost
Zone Alarm
Windows Native (Advanced?) Firewall

I am mainly concerned with attacks over Toredo, being able to protect without disabling.
Will the above listed be able to handle this?

 

Tomato 'teddy Bear' supports IPv6, it also supports USB storage. http://www.linksysinfo.org/forums/showthread.php?t=63587

Personally, I'm currently using a customised Oleg firmware (http://code.google.com/p/wl500g/) in my router, as it has nice support for brokered IPv6 tunnels. I use Hurricane Electric http://tunnelbroker.net/

It's been a while since I looked at the offerings from PCTools. Outpost and ZA, so best I can suggest is check to see if they support the Windows native protected socket option and also see if they have edge traversal. If they do then you're probably good to go, otherwise stay with the Windows 7 (possibly Vista, never used it) firewall.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20090007251.pdf [PDF]
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb190942(v=VS.85).aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb190940(VS.85).aspx

This is quite a good read [PDF]
http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/reference/Teredo_Security.pdf

 

Hi,

Thank you all for your replies and the information provided.

What I find unbelievable at this point is the lack of support for IPv6 by several software firewall makers [ e.g.: Online Armor, Comodo, etc. ] even knowing that we're running out of IPv4 addresses and the fact that Windows Vista became available back in Nov. 2006 and Windows7 in October last year.

Thus people with those firewalls installed on Win Vista/Win 7 machines are unprotected when it comes to IPv6 filtering unless they explicitly disable IPv6 at OS level.

I had thought that supporting 64-bit Operating Systems with software was going to encounter more technical difficulties than supporting just IPv6 but I see now I was mistaken.



Regards,


Carlos

 

Thanks Heimdall for the infos.

Tomato USB codename: 'Teddy Bear' is a fork of Tomato, available through tomatousb.org.

That explains our difference in understanding on Tomato IPv6 support.

IPv6 support @ Polarcloud.
Tomato>Wikibooks>feature comparison. All versions said 'No'.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Tomato_Firmware

How to Enable IPv6 Blocking in Vista's Firewall

Managing IPv6 - CERT

 

Blocking IPv6 is certainly the best option for those with little interest or need. For those that wish to investigate the possibilities IPv6 has to offer, I'd seriously suggest creating an account with one of the free tunnel brokers, as opposed to using Teredo or ISTAPI.

The places to look are:
http://gogonet.gogo6.com/page/freenet6-services
http://www.sixxs.net/main/
http://tunnelbroker.net/

Once your account is created the process of creating a tunnel is quite easy. Also, If you have a router with good firmware that supports IPv6, you can create your tunnel endpoint in the router and also use the router to distribute an IPv6 address block to your Intranet.

 

sixxs has a list of consumer and enterprise routers that are certified for IPv6 support.
http://www.sixxs.net/wiki/Routers