Love these forums. Most agree NOD = best AV. Is there an acknowledged "best" firewall? I use ZoneAlarm (freebie). But I see some implying that Sygate Pro might be a better choice. If so, why? Perhaps someone can direct me to another thread along these lines.
Hi Spanky! Here you find some additional information about firewalls: http://www.pcflank.com/art21.htm http://www.pcflank.com/art27.htm Best regards! Patrice
When it comes to firewalls, what is best for one person, may not be best for the next. The main reason for this is that even the most powerful firewall available could be a disaster in the hands of someone that did not know how to set it up right. ZA can provide good protection for those that are unfamiliar with rule making in firewalls or for those that just do not care to mess with making rules. Most of the better known firewalls can be set up to provide good protection for 95% of what the average user might come across. A really good hacker can usually get around even the best defenses given enough time and a fair amount of motivation to do so. If you are interested in learning how to make some rules and tightening up your traffic control, Sygate is one to try. I'm partial to Outpost and it is pretty user friendly. Kerio is a good firewall as well as Tiny and they require perhaps a little more work in making rules. NIS, Look N Stop, and maybe soon, Kaspersky Firewall are worth checking out. If you want to try some other firewalls, go for it. Try to get a handle on the basic setup first, so you don't open a bunch of port by making rules before you understand how to. To answer your question as to why Sygate or another firewall may be better than ZA Free, goes back to making rules to tighten up access. In a combination Application and rules based firewall you can really start to control how your applications and services behave instead of accepting the Firewalls set handling of certain ports, protocols, etc. Don't forget - The brain is the best firewall around, assuming it is used.
HI. I agree with Root. Firewalls are a personal thing.What one user likes,another user may not like as much. I have tried most of the free firewalls. I like Kerio the best in that category. I personally prefer the rules-based firewalls. Making Kerio rules does take some time and effort.Google comes in handy for finding rules suggestions. I like a firewall that has control over applications and is rules-based. I recently registered LooknStop. It has some cool features that I wanted and the support is excellent. You could check out some firewalls to see what you are comfortable with. I know that Outpost and Kerio will be releasing new versions in the future.Those programs are worth watching.Outpost sounds promising and I saw some features in Kerio 3b6 that were interesting also.Although my hunch is that the new Outpost is much closer to release than Kerio's new firewall.
Hey ignition For a beautiful Fully Customizable Rule-base Software Firewall with Multi-Layer Filtering (Packet Filtering, Application Filtering, & TCP Stateful Packet Inspection) I would Highly Recommend Look ‘n’ Stop Personal Firewall, not only is it the smallest but easiest on System Resources, and very fast Loading not to mention it can be tweaked to load fully functional in a very earlier Windows Booting Process compared to these other Software Firewalls. > Version: 2.04p2 Size: 480 KB Operating Systems: Windows® 95, 98, 2000, Me and XP Homepage: http://www.looknstop.com/En/ Direct Download: http://www.looknstop.com/En/LooknStop_Setup_204p2.exe MD5-Checksum: AEDD97C290CB8850F3AA30E98AE77581 (MD5sum.exe) Author: Frederic Gloannec E-Mail: looknstop@soft4ever.com > Look ‘n’ Stop Personal Firewall is extremely stable even under Massive Attacks, I’ve tested by setting a couple of powerful Hi Boxes on my xDSL butt, 85-100Packets per second being Logged by my End to Look ‘n’ Stop “Log” screen which was going for 2/3 hours Non-Stop, no System Delays, Crashes, Freezes, or Errors of any kind. Look ‘n’ Stop Detects & Block’s all IP & Non-IP or Other Protocols, and its Packet Filtering Layer does not have any ill-effects on your Bandwidth Performance. And it’s Default pre-installed rule-set “EnhancedRulesSet.rls” was designed for beautiful strength for newcomers. The Technical Support by the Author or folks from the Look ‘n’ Stop Forums are just the greatest & the Author himself frequently visits and responds on them, And you can guarantee when E-mailing the Technical Support for Assistance, Questions, or Comments, you’ll always be responded back within 24hour period… New-comer to rule-base software firewalls?, No problem Look ‘n’ Stop’s comes with pre-installed FAQS which is very easy to comprehend, And like mentioned above any Additional Information can be contained off of the Look ‘n’ Stop Forums or by the Products Technical Support via E-mail.
Like root said; what may be good for one may not be for another, one of the main issues for that reason is the interpretation of Software’s Features… And I know if one is willing to want to understand that they will be capable of comprehending, the most fastest effective ways I personally know of is Downloading & Installing one of the most Advanced rule-base Software Firewall you can come across and focus all your efforts into Learning the In and Outs of how it works, guarantee you’ll Enjoy and feel much better after bit of this… After you get the basic kn0wledge you’d most likely be capable of configuring any Software Firewall to the Maximum of its capabilities. Also when you are testing out Software Firewalls you should try to keep them Installed for at least a week while attempting to learn its Features, people jumps too quickly and experiences problems and starts spreading rumours about their poor experiences with the products they have very little understanding of which is mostly common reasons for their bad experiences (Outpost not Allowing me to Connect to the Internet, Uninstall tried something other-than that didn’t prevent me from accessing my Internet like lame Outpost. Or Kerio not stealthing my browser, so obviously it’s Packet Filtering is very poor so I switched to ZoneAlarm and even though its slow and it doesn’t provide me with Features I believe a Software Firewall should have, I still much happier with it then to be putting up with Kerio not stealthing or?)… P.S: My Software Security is 100% secure against Remote Packets whether it’s Nukes/Scans/Hack Attempts over IP & Non-IP or Other Protocols my Inbound Security Blocks ALL.
Hi again! Well, the only thing I can say at the moment is, that I fully agree with the statements of Ph33r! I'm using Look'n'Stop myself for quite a while now and I'm very happy with it as well. I also tested this firewall with different (attacking) tools (Superscan, Nmap,...) and I wasn't able to get through. Last but not least, the support is absolutely GREAT!! Best regards! Patrice
Features ? Yeah they all seem to want to compete to add some. I chose L&S not for it's features but because of it's security, and in that regard it has no flaws.
Thx for the replies. I've read them all twice. I see what you are saying, and thought I might try some of the other FWs. Is it possible/recommended to use two firewalls at the same time? I currently have the ZA freebie installed. Should I unistall it first? It took me a while to set it up.
Do not install 2 firewall on one box. If you care to use 2 firewalls, get one dedicated near your internet connection (pick any router) and a free one on your pc. As for a router: get a floppy based linux solution (like Freesco or Coyote). Don't be afraid for the linux part, it is only the underlying operating system, you will not use it , just edit one config file. Big advantage of this solution: it's all free (provided that you have an old 486/pentium 1 pc lying around).
If you are going to change or try a different firewall,make sure to uninstall ZA!(or any previous firewall) If you run two firewalls(software firewalls) at the same time you will have problems!
donlon, do you use Bitguard? If you do can you tell us what you like and don't like about it. The firewall sounds very interesting to me.
Well .... it's small, uses small amount of system resources and it's very fast. I haven't noticed ANY slowdown with this Firewall, and i'm very "nerotic" about programs that slowdown my system, NIS do that BIGTIME. It catches all outbound connection (even itself ) and pops up with a "what to do" dialog box. I tryed to forward a couple of ports in my router, to my PC, they turned up wide open on a portscan without Bitguard (Of course). With Bitguard the were stealthed ... very nice, I know a lot of FW do that trick, ... but still nice. You can't disable it without rebooting, it NEVER conflicts with other programs ... some other FW do. It's easy to set up your LAN, just add you IP range to the "trusted IP" It is very easy to use, maybe too easy for some and that's pretty much the only "bad" thing to say about this FW. I have tested this FW for a week now, and I'm deffently buying it at the end of the trial period, this is THE firewall . You should download it and try for your self, you won't be disapointed
It’s actually quite impressive; not the most impressive Software Firewall I seen, as I’m already using the most impressive Software Firewall however this Firewall is neat and even 1 year old could configure this Software Firewall. I’m glad donlon posted on that particular Software Firewall in the other topic, it’s the first I’ve heard of it … Wonder how long has it been up and running for?
What kind of control does it have with application and global rules? Is it a simple yes or no like ZA or can you control ports, addresses, direction, etc? I am already beta testing three programs right now and I can't really afford to risk another firewall running with what I'm doing right now, but I am curious.
If you interested I could do a full report on-it & poster? And poster for temporary Window captures of the Applications Features… But you should read through its Manual for Complete Official Details on it’s Features & Capabilities… http://www.tryus.dk/bitguardmanual.asp
No I believe Full report is irreverent, nothing you cannot find-out from its Manual located at http://www.tryus.dk/bitguardmanual.asp . And I feel anyone who is interested in this Software Firewall should rely on Information contained in its Manual, and even though a manual is not needed for the usage of this Firewall product it will enhance user’s kn0wledge in different areas on how this and other Software Firewall product alike functions…
In the words of Mr Blaze -- I am most fervently a nubie. [Not nubile -- nubie.] In guileless innocence I ask -- isn't BitDefender working somewhat along the lines of System Safety Monitor [SSM], but at a price of ~$57/year? Plus, if I understand the FAQ correctly, they *recommend* annual license renewal so as to stay abreast of future improvements to the program. Am I mis-reading? If so, I apologize in sackcloth & ashes. If not, isn't a *recommended* outlay of ~$57/ year a bit pricey? And doesn't SSM do a somewhat similar job, for a lot less [read zero] money?
LOL if it was anything like System Safety Monitor [SSM] i wouldn't be impressed.... You have to Try in order to see for yourself.... Regards,
i decided to give bitguard a try, but it only resulted in BSOD's during bootup. ended up uninstalling from safe mode. i guess it conflicts with my installed but disabled outpost
I had a go with it and it is nice and simple. it sets up on its own and gives full stealth and everything else like I suppose a firewall is meant to do . I started reading the manuel but it was one of those hard reading exercises for my eyes so gave up . I agree Bellgamin the $57 is rather steep although one may or may not have to pay that much , One would , given the time, proberbly really enjoy learning what one can do with this firewall as its quite appealing in some ways . However I also like my lookn stop , so off it goes for now.
I wrote the guys at Tryus about the price and renewall, and they said that once you bought the FW you have it for life, no annual renewall and free upgrade for life too.
Like solarpowered candle, I love my Look 'n' Stop... You and i solarpowered candle knows a good Software Firewall when we see one...
