What is the most successful Firewall?

I would like to know what would be the best firewall for Windows XP I am using the regular windows right now but that really isn't a firewall its just a security thing.​

 

well "best firewall" is relative. do u prefer rules-based or app-based? do u want free or are paid ones ok? do u want low resource usage?

also the phrase "successful firewall" is also relative. do u mean successful in leaktests or successful as a product (marketshare)?

anyways, my current firewall is looknstop and i like it very much. its light and its does very well in at firewallleaktester.com

 

The Windows firewall is a real firewall. It is just a very basic firewall as it only filters incoming traffic while most third party firewalls can filter incoming and outgoing traffic on a per application basis.

To answer your question, I have no idea what the best firewall is. It is probably the firewall that you can learn to use effectively at a price that you are willing to pay.

About the most successful firewall, if you are talking marketshare, I'll take a shot in the dark and say ZoneLabs makes the most successfull firewall (just a guess).

 

Is the correct answer

 

And don't forget a router. Router + Firewall is better.

 

The most successful firewall is one that controls all the traffic the way the user wants and has the lowest system resource usage in return for that protection. Something of a "holy grail", as far as I can see, and the actual answer varies as much as the names of users on this forum.

At least, that's how I see that question being answered.

Maybe in addition it should strip out scrolling marquee posts from web forums and present them as something readable instead?

 

I think the most successfull firewall is Zone Alarm Free coz it's the most used and the most popular all over the world, aside from that many pc experts always recommends ZoneAlarm. Its ease of use is one of its best feature.

 

I also use ZoneAlarm Free for a very long time and I like it, because I understand more than 50% of it, which is unusual for me.

But I always had the impression that these experts recommend ZA Pro, not ZA Free, which is indeed better than ZA Free.
I could be wrong of course. I only can read about it, not verify it personally due to my lack of knowledge.

 

How about this floppy firewall? It's fun and cheap:

http://www.samag.com/documents/s=1155/sam0101i/0101i.htm

 

Oh, yes...many "experts" will now recommends and insists on ZoneAlarm Pro rather than the ZoneAlarm Free and that's because of the latest testing ranking results done by gkweb. But, before that, I am sure most experts will just be content on just using and advising ZoneAlarm free instead of pro.

But even with that ranking results...still ZoneAlarm free is one of the most successfull that's hard to beat. If users are in fast broadband connection I still believe the free version is still one of the best among the free I've ever seen. Ordinary pc surfers are "immune" to ordinary attacks if they have this firewall.

 

Kerio, It can be as easy or as difficult as you want it to be. It can be free for a basic good firewall and is low on resources.

 

I just like to be behind a good old NAT router...let the hardware to the blocking. I'm only concerned about outside coming in.

 

Go to http://grc.com and try the "Shields up" test to check the effectivness of your firewall. You can either check the most commonly used ports individually or check the first 1056. choose the latter to get the best test. You will be graded when the test is complete. If you don't get a perfect pass, you will be told which settings you need to tighten up on.

I use the hardware firewall on my Draytek 2600G router, and I received a pass. So it shows how good these hardware firewalls are. Also having a hardware based firewall rather than a software one frees up resources on your computer.

 

Running a mere web-scan especially one such as ‘Shields UP!!’ to determine the effectiveness of a firewall is quite humorous thing to say, I mean you could at least determine your firewall blocks incoming TCP packets with SYN Flag set, and of course block a mere ICMP ping request (but now a-days even their ICMP Pinging is unreliable).

True that a hardware firewall can reserve some system performance, that is if you don’t want to use an Application-filtering based software firewall, many of them today can be very much of a system resource eater and especially under heavy packet floods. But it is also true that Application-filtering based software firewalls benefit in the way of outgoing leaks, something hardware firewall lacks of.

 

Little comparison chart made by the little green-hatted Phant0m above:
http://www.mntolympus.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=2032