The Firewall

Hi all,

I have been a long time user of NOD32 and would not contemplate any other AV application. As far as a firewall is concerned - I am at a loss.
At the moment I am running Comodo and I am quite impressed. Yet its free - something about the notion of being free is disturbing. No such thing as a "free meal!!"

So, how about the firewall in ESET Smart Security?It doesn't look configurable. What's your take on this as a "good" firewall?

 

It is already configurable in part and of course this is only the first(ish) beta we're using so it can't really be an indication of the quality of the final product.

 

Heavily depends on what your skill-level is I guess.. I think it's very configurable so far, yet there is still lotsa room to improve.
People who are used to using rule-based packetfilters will find this one even very easy to configure. People who rely on "out-of-the-box" firewalls and let those firewalls think for them will have to face a bit of a learning curve, altho this will be no steep curve - all it takes is some effort.
People who are willing to put this effort in, will have a very lean and fast packetfilter as result.

I'm btw not saying that either way is wrong.. It's what you prefer. My closest friends have no security related job in the IT bizz, so they couldnt care less and they dont want to (and dont need to even) know, what all those rules mean. They take the performance-hit for granted by using firewalls like Comodo and I can completely understand that. They have different interests.

Then again.. it might look like mumbojumbo in the beginning - but it's not so difficult once you start reading up on protocols, ports, etc.. and actually start looking at what you actually log in them logfiles

Cheers.

 

no problems in configuration here ...

 

Don't be so quick to undermine Free tools, many of the World's Best anti-malware tools are free, and one of the all time best firewalls (in many an advanced users opinion), Sygate, was also free.
Comodo is a very capable firewall, and during my testing on Eset's Security Suite firewall, I found it to also be very capable. Eset could use a bit better packet filtering logs still and better advanced rules config GUI, it will mature very nicely I believe.
I think most firewall coders could do well to have a look at Sygate's last version (before Symantec bought and killed it....B@st@rds!!), and take a lesson from how they showed their active & logged connections, and packet filtering options and GUI's, and make theirs similar to how Sygate had it set up. Sygate's advanced rules setup was clunky and terribly confusing for newer to intermediate users tho, I think Eset is on track there.

Nowadays, most reviewer sites have Zone Alarm firewall listed as the Best out there, and it's also a free version, so free doesn't mean "cheap", "insecure", or "untrustworthy". It only means that someone feels that security is important for EVERYONE and so they offer a full functioning free version of their product, with some less "Features" than their paid for versions, but with all the security intact.