ZA 6 Free vs Sunbelt Kerio 4.2.3 Free

Well, maybe I'll give it another try...but I didn't change any of the settings after install--HIPS was grayed-out, and when I tried to activate it, I got a message saying it's only available on the paid version. All I did after install was re-boot, and allow access for a few programs, i.e., Firefox, Outlook. Not sure how I would get a faulty install....

 

It sounds like it was seen as installed previously so the 30 day time trial is considered up so you are stuck with the free version whcih doesn't include HIPS.

 

I've never had any previous iteration of Kerio installed on my machine...at least since I reformatted a few months ago....Beyond that, I left everything to default "out of the box" settings & failed the Shields Up! test--I know such tests aren't the end-all, be-all, but I always at least consider such test results when deciding whether to purchase a SW firewall...

 

You got my interest... I downloaded Kerio 4.2.3, uninstalled my present firewall and installed Kerio. Shields Up gave all stealth on defaults and the HIPS was checked and not greyed out. Application Behavior Blocking is not checked by default. (It listed 29 days left in trial as well on the license page).

Don't know what to say in your case but I'm not sure I would take the time to try it again if you're happy enough with ZA.

 

Another thing: you did set it with the "easy" or "quick" mode (don't remember how they call it), during setup, right? that could explain the Leaktest result, you didn't get prompt for leaktest.exe; you should better use it with the "advanced" mode at setup ...if you ever try it again .

Cheers,
nicM

 

^^Not saying I'm happy w/ ZA....In fact, I was surprised (disappointed) that Sunbelt Kerio didn't live up to expectations. I was hoping it was at least the equivalent of ZA, but it wasn't on my system. Maybe I'll try it again...I mean, all it will cost me is some time.

 

I selected "advanced" mode during install.....

 

The combination of Kerio Firewall resource usage and Counterspy's heavy footprint could could result in breathtaking numbers.

 

I uninstalled CS a couple months ago b/c of that...I had it on a notebook w/ a 1.6GHz Pentium M & 2GB of RAM....It was a resource hog..

 

I recently trialed the new SB Kerio 5 and found that it and KAV 2006 beta do not play together very well. Every time I tried to launch MSN, my computer would crash hard with BSOD saying that the system was shut down for protection.

When I could get Kerio not to crash (by re-installing with the 'recommended' settings), Kerio seemed faster than Outpost Pro which I use now, but KAV and Outpost play together nicer.

Also, I have not found a better ad blocker than the one in Outpost. ZA and Kerio pale in comparision to Outpost in this area.

A good Ad blocker is important to me, but might not be to some in considering a software firewall.

Just my 2 cents.

Chaz.

 

I found that KAV 6 and Kerio appear to conflict with similar modules - Application Integrity Control in KAV and Application Behavior Blocking in Kerio. One or the other should be on but not both or a BSOD can result at times.

 

There is a known conflict between Kav and Kerio,and an answer to the problem was posted at the Kerio forum......http://forums.kerio.com/


Sadly Kerio announced this evening that the Forum is being closed as of 27/1/2006 at 5pm pst.

Anyone wanting to take a look at the posts better move quickly.
The messga from Kerio is short and sharp and does not offer forum members any alternative arrangement

 

Maybe try the Sunbelt Kerio forum at Castle Cops?

http://castlecops.com/f208-Sunbelt_Kerio.html

 

Wow .. Thanks I was considering an alternative for ZoneAlarm for sometime now. Letme see if this is any good.

 

Since starting this thread a few weeks ago I have been using Kerio and it has worked flawlessly. It does use a few more MB of RAM than ZA 6 Free but system startup is a bit quicker than with ZA and browsing is not impaired at all - to be fair did not find browsing impaired with ZA either!

I've also tried P2P (EMule) and left my PC running with it for about 36 hours and it worked fantastically, no crashes or lock ups, memory use stayed constant - I'd read somewhere that Kerio can have issues with P2P but I certainly didn't notice anything.

So I have pretty much decided Kerio is now my free firewall of choice.

BTW no one has answered my question about SNORT IDS - I don't really understand what it is but I read somewhere (on Wilders I think) that Kerio uses SNORT - is it true? and if so what does SNORT actually do?

 

"What is Snort?

Snort is an open source network intrusion prevention system, capable of performing real-time traffic analysis and packet logging on IP networks. It can perform protocol analysis, content searching/matching and can be used to detect a variety of attacks and probes, such as buffer overflows, stealth port scans, CGI attacks, SMB probes, OS fingerprinting attempts, and much more.

Snort uses a flexible rules language to describe traffic that it should collect or pass, as well as a detection engine that utilizes a modular plugin architecture. Snort has a real-time alerting capability as well, incorporating alerting mechanisms for syslog, a user specified file, a UNIX socket, or WinPopup messages to Windows clients using Samba's smbclient."

http://www.snort.org/


You can see the basis for the rules under Intrusions-> NIPS Advanced-> Details for each section.

 

Hi q1aqza,

Application outbound control is a feature of ZA free in addition to stealthing all of the ports - it prompts for Deny or Allow.

-- Tom

 

Comparing free to free , they are both good . Kerio , even in free mode , should do better on leaktests though .

 

Cheers Tom, I am aware of ZA's capabilities. What I think you may have not picked up on from my post is that Kerio has application behaviour control, in addition to outbound control. As hollywood said, it is this application behaviour control that (should) give Kerio free better performance on leaktests than ZA free - lets face it ZA free sucks on leaktests but ZA Pro is excellent with them, as is Kerio paid.

 

Hi q1aqza,

Sorry - I mistook the two items referred to as application behavior and outbound control rather than NIPS and application behavior - mea culpa!

-- Tom

 

I thought that I had posted to your question. I guess not...

I really like Kerio 4.2; unless you are pretty astute at writing rules, you may want to read the thread linked below and import the BZ rules set. These are the rules that all of the 2.x Kerio devotees came up with. On my installation, there was one rule that did not apply or did not work, I just had to delete it. Once you get the apps. set up, and the rules going, you can uncheck the predefined rules that 4.2 comes with.

When this thread was originally posted, Kerio 4.x was buggy. Good now, but remember that the guy that made the rules was disgusted with Kerio's buggy 4.x when he and many like the 2.x firewall so much.

link:
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,8023708~mode=flat