Does Zone Alarm free have the Network Wizard?

ZA free is not detecting my network - I'm wondering if the New Network Wizard is only in the Pro version.

Thanks

 

vincenzo,

Can you give me some more details on your type of connection? Router, dial up, cable DSL etc.

 

Connecting wireless via D link DI614 wireless router, cable.

 

ZA free won't work with wireless, you will have to upgrade to ZA Pro.

 

Are you saying ZA free won't work with wireless, or do you mean the New Network Wizard in ZA free will not work with wireless?

 

Wi Fi is not supported in ZA free, in ZAPro, they have a tab under option for detecting Wi-Fi networks.

 

Well, oddly enough, ZA Free works fine here on my wireless. I don't know what it means when they say ZA Free doesn't "support" wireless, but it does work ok. Detected my network adapter fine and works great.

 

I think it just doesn't support the detection of new wireless i.e. when using a hot spot or something

 

Ok, there must be some reason for them saying it's not supported. Wasn't sure what it was though..

 

ZA (free) indeed does not support Wireless in the sense that it will not automatically detect any wireless networks. You can still use wireless with the free version but you would need to manually add the router's IP and the IP of any computer (you want to share files with) on the network to the trusted zone.

 

Thanks unhappy_viewer for the clarification, however, I did not have to manually add anything to anywhere. Just installed ZA Free on my wireless PC here and ran it out of the box, worked great.. ZA Free knew the router's IP all by itself and set itself up to work fine.

 

I did some research on the ZA forum. Seems with ZA Free, this feature works for some people, not for others.

 

But are you able to share files, share printers, and the like or are you simply sharing an internet connection?

I have ZA free on my 2 computers that are hooked up via a wireless network. ZA free works, but it blocks a lot of communications that it shouldn't.

 

Just sharing an internet connection here, no file or printer sharing and so on. So I can't speak for any of that.

 

For me, ZA free detected my wireless as just a network connection, which I would expect any firewall to do as a bare minimum. Whereas ZA Pro actually clearly identifies it as a wireless connection.

I guess the key benefit of the wireless detection in Pro is if you have your home wireless set as Trusted and have the Trusted slider set to allow for printer/file sharing (or even unrestricted) but then go off and use a wireless hotspot but forget to slide the Trusted security slider back up maximum (which stealth's your PC on your local LAN) then at least the wireless protection in Pro will recognise that the hotpost is a new wireless LAN and by deafult will make it Internet zone rather than Trusted. I haven't put this into practice, but it is my understanding of the wireless detection feature.

 

The ability to recognize new wireless networks and offer to configure them differently was one of the reasons I decided to try ZA free, but I was disappointed that it did not work for me.

Does anyone know of other firewalls, free or not, that have this feature?

Thanks

 

ZA Pro, ZA Anti-spyware, ZA ISS all will do that. Here's the comaprison chart from Zonelabs site: http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/company/products/znalm/comparison.jsp?lid=home_compare

 

Thanks for that info, but I am looking now for firewalls other than Zonelabs products that would have that feature.

 

This would be my suggestion. ZA Free is a good product, but when you start spending money there are better choices IMHO. Zone Labs has a second Networking protection product too. Makes it easier to set up. It's usefulness and features escape me at the moment. But the costs of all this is just to much from ZoneLabs.