Your opinions on the most secure firewall?

Ditto... if you interpret the thread title as "Your opinions on the best firewall." The answer will vary, case by case. In additions to expectations of functionality, we also need to know the user's level of experience and/or willingness to learn. We also need to know the hardware platform -- try putting Online Armor on a PII laptop with 128 Mb of RAM.

 

I wouldn't put XP on a PII laptop with 128mb of RAM

 

PII? Wow, must be a certified museum piece! (Just thinking how much that crap cost someone... Ouch!).

 

I am still using a PII system. Luckily it didn't cost me a penny (even the shipping was free).

 

Most routers we use at home only have DHCP, NAT and SPI features but don't really
qualify as hardware routers -- yea some even have filters -- but still that's not
enough.

A real hardware firewall appliance has a serial cable for a monitor attachment
and can be configured without any attachment to a lan-side system.
IF this device is administered by a professional network engineer, then everything
on the LAN side is controlled (and protected by the same rules).
This is real network security -- all systems configured alike from one interface.

Like you, I can't afford one of these either, so we opt for a cheap router
(at least we get NAT and SPI) and then use a software FW for each system.
Using a 'decent 2-way FW' (unlike the MS default being 1-way inbound only),
we get to control both sides of the connections.

All those pop-ups --- they're trying to further qualify which applications are
allowed to make connections. When you start your email client and (the first
time) you get the popup, you know you started the program and ports
25,110,143 are valid so you ALLOW.

Two days (or minutes) later something named xyx.dll wants access to port 25.
Hopefully you get a popup and you say to yourself, "What the Heck!" --
what's xyx.dll and why is it trying to send email!! DENY! DENY! DENY.
You just slammed the door on some worm trying to steal info from your system!

Don't you love those popups I DO!