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What type of Firewall do you use?


MrG

What type of Firewall do you use?  

207 members have voted

  1. 1. What type of Firewall do you use?

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I use Zonealarm & am happy with it. I am sure though that if someone wanted to get through the firewall they would & could. My Father always taught me that locks were there to honest people honest, that the thief would get through anyway. :o

 

Have a good day,

Normandie

 

 

 

Normandie, thanks! Good reminder for our heads - that can get very wound up by security matters :wacko: Ultimately there IS no security! Only luck (chance) good or bad. You have a good day too.

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Normandie, thanks! Good reminder for our heads - that can get very wound up by security matters :wacko: Ultimately there IS no security!  Only luck (chance) good or bad. You have a good day too.

 

 

 

 

Probably the best review of a firewall that I have ever read.

 

It may protect you from random everyday attacks, but if someone is determined to get in to your computer, they will find a way.

 

But then as long as you keep your computer clean of personal information, and do not partake in illegal activities on the net, then what the heck, let them get in.

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i having been trying the different firewall lately...

norton firewall

sygate firewall

outpost firewall...

 

i found that except for outpost pesonal firewall, the rest takes up a lot of resources...

 

norton firewall have many process images... which takes up a fair amount of resouces each... but added up together, they takes up a lot...

 

sygate firewall have a single process image... but it takes up more than 15,000K of memory usage alone...

 

outpost firewall have a single process image... and take its up much lesser compared to others... but outpost personal firewall seems very difficult to use... i takes some times to play around with it...

 

zonealarm have 2 process images... vsmon and zlclient... both take up around >6,000K of memory... rather huge...

 

is there any other good firewall...?

--==aGumon==--

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but outpost personal firewall seems very difficult to use... i takes some times to play around with it...

I tried Outpost Personal Firewall for a very short time a few weeks ago. The configuration first looked much different than any other firewall I had ever used, however after reading the guides (some of the best ever for a firewall) I understood it a little more, but ultimately it is rather old. That's the reason I went with ZoneAlarm (free edition) since there's not too much hassle configuring it, and after rridgely pointed out that the pop-up alerts that really annoyed me could be disabled I started to like it even more. Even though Zone Labs states it works with Win98 SE and above, I installed it on my Win98 system and runs fine. To me ZoneAlarm is perfect regardless of it's ram usage for the fact I don't have to fiddle with it by adding custom rules which got old and became rather unappealing over the past few years (Tiny, Kerio, Sygate).

 

I won't use Sygate Personal Firewall ever again since it has the tendency to start messing up after it's been installed for awhile, which could be days, weeks, months, it just depends. I had thought the problem with it was just my WinXP system, however when I dusted off my Win98 system to update it I was confronted with the same exact problems. If you want to know just how problematic it really is look on the Sygate Forums.

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Andavari,

If a firewall is hard to configure it might be because it is complex and offers great flexibility so that can be a good thing.

Many firewalls are way to trivial, often to the point of having a ON and OFF button where you cant configure much at all. Windows firewalls in general are very silly and more toys than tools.

I am in love with iptables/netfilter SPI (Stateful Packet Inspection) firewall under Linux.

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Eldmannen the thing is that not everyone wants to worry about configuring a firewall. I think your right those firewalls are not as good as they could be but the average user isnt getting hacked without visiting porn site and downloading off of p2p. I know many people who would never even have any kind of firewall but I came over cleaned their computer of malware and then installed ZA and they never even know its running.

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I actually used to use that agumon. I think ZA and Computer Associates share technologies. If you buy ZA security suite the AV thats in it has the same Vet engine as EZ antivirus (or at least is used to).

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I would feel cheated too. The good thing is that ZA probably updates their firewall a lot more than Computer Associates. Unless they release updates at the same time in which you were ripped off $20. Out of curiosity what feature made you use the pro version of ZA I have been thinking about buying it.

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before i use zonealarm, i tried different firewall... such as outpost firewall free... sygate firewall free... and kerio firewall... or coz, i also tired zonealarm free... then my friend out of no where... sell me his zonealarm pro at a cheaper price... so i bought it... use it and like it a lot... he is now using norton firewall included in norton security suite... of coz with all the antivirus... antispam etc all in one package... :lol:

 

actually i am thinking of switching to other software firewall...whether free or paid version... something that dont use this much resources... but outpost seems to be the only one appear to be the choice... but compared to zonealarm... zonealarm is easier to do basic configuration...

 

anyway... is there any yearly subscription fees for EZ firewall...?

--==aGumon==--

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If a firewall is hard to configure it might be because it is complex and offers great flexibility so that can be a good thing.

 

 

 

A "hard" configuration I've never had a problem with since I had some pretty strong blocking rules when I used Tiny, Kerio, and Sygate, and I understood very early on which protocols and ports to block so the difficulty of configuration is a moot invalid point for me. I was only pointing out the difference of Outpost Personal Firewall, which at first glance seemed alien in configuration when compared to Tiny, Kerio, Sygate.

 

What I was getting at is manually configuring a firewall is a royal pain in the bullocks, hence there's a much higher probability of making input errors (user error) that will leave a system vulnerable. Having had and used some custom rule sets as long as my arm I know how much goes into making sure everything is correctly inputted especially when blocking some pesky ultra annoying IP addresses, and IP ranges I deemed unsafe.

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I think I'm just going to stick with ZA free

i also think that using the free version might be a better choice than using the paid version... there is no need to worry for updates etc... but of coz, if more protection and features are necessary... then have to pay for the 'pro' version...

--==aGumon==--

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  • 3 weeks later...
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zonelabs release a new update/version of zonealarm... it is totally bloated... with confusing interface (at least for the Programs tab)... hate it...

 

 

 

It's alright on my end. The only problem I had was trying to use my v5.5 configuration, it caused a load of problems therefore I completely uninstalled it and started fresh.

 

It does have some extra defenses such as built-in spyware protection (even the free edition) via:

"C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\ZoneLabs\spyware.dat" which isn't exactly a small file at "546 KB (559,170 bytes)."

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