Has anyone used 8Signs FW

Just out of curiousity, is 8Signs a good FW? What does it have that LNS doesn't?

Thanks

 

8Signs is a good firewall. It does not have the application control that LnS has however. It is similar to CHX in that respect, and not quite as good at that. But it is nice..

 

Hi Kerodo,

I keep bouncing around looking at FW'S, so far I settled with LNS as a decision, haven't installed it yet. Is CHX on the same level as LNS? Hmm, I have never heard of that one. Any info you have to offer is appreciated.

Thanks

 

CHX is a little different. It is primarily a packet filter, offering no app control, same as 8Signs. I'd take CHX over 8Signs though. CHX is perhaps the best of the straight packet filters. It is free, and you can find it here:

http://www.idrci.net

LnS is very good. I like it. I did have one problem with it. As I ran it for a few days, ram usage slowly rose to about 15mb. This was rather high for a light app like LnS. Others claim they don't have this problem, so you'll have to try it yourself and see. Aside from that though, I found it very nice. Just used the Advanced rule set and modified it to suit my needs. Tried Phantom's also, and liked it too.

 

I must disagree but , I know nothing of firewalls . lol . Kerodo is very good at summing up firewalls . He is very good with opinions on these . I must , however , disagree this time . 8signs , IMO , is MUCH better than CHX . I do agree that it is a good choice . 8Signs and Kerio are basically the same thing . I believe Kerio is a bit stronger yet , the marketing for 8Signs does so for Kerio as well . You will see quite a few similarities in them . I would choose LnS though . A bit more flexible . A bit more powerful .

 

CHX does true SPI, the best in its class including UDP and ICMP, the new one does payload filtering and stream filtering as well as ARP.

Considering all these features, guess CHX makes for a far better package.

 

So, help me to know, what CHX-I has in security, that Tiny firewall has not. and opposite. How CHX-I works in gateway environment.

Thanks in advance.
joter

 

CHX is an inbound firewall with tight SPI and when set up properly can totally stealth a gateway machine even with ICS, with proper outbound filters, it can also prevent Trojans etc. It is not like Tiny however which goes further in protecting the OS, registry etc.

 

With Tiny Firewall, you have also IDS (you can import Snort rules) which I think is very important.

But I do not know how Tiny handles stream filtering and ARP.

regards
joter

 

You can use Snort with CHX as well, it features a IP list and you can use that along with Snort to block IPs.

 

Thanks fella's for all your replies. An Kerodo thanks for link.

Is Snort a set of rules? [Edit] Snort is a set of predefined rules. That CHX looks very in depth. CHX does outbound filtering? I will have to take a look at the manual to see how hard it would be to set up. It does look beyond my abilities/knowledge though.

This may be bit off, but I have to ask. I see some terminology thrown around like BTW, BT, IMO, IMHO. What do these mean?

Thanks!