what is best free firewall to have??

[�±Títåñ±�™]

May seem a stupid and altogether pointless question but what is the best firewall to have that aint gonna cost me and where do I get it from...I had zonealarms befroe the reboot but now I'm stuck as to which would be the better firewall to go for??



�±Títåñ±�™

[dumbware]

What OS are you running?

I run XP Pro and use Tiny Personal Firewall by Tiny Software (http://www.tinysoftware.com/home/tiny?s=3190706199471800570A0&la=EN&va=aa&pg=download). Its a nice one, has most of the features that ZA has, not as big or annoying, and best of all its free! :D
Another one is BlackICE and its not free. You can find that at: NetworkICE (http://www.networkice.com).

[mackerel]

Did you havea problem with Zonealarm? It gets my vote :D

[jema]

I did not like ZoneAlarm.

Am giving the tiny one a try, I will try and keep you posted.

jema

[NorthernYankee]

Zone Alarm Pro user here and it works great for me:D

--NY

[�±Títåñ±�™]

I have used that tiny personnal firewall before but didn't think it gave me the protection I need as it never seemed to do anything......although zonealarms is a pain in the arse at least you knew it was working.... is there any others out there that aint gonna cost???....


�±Títåñ±�™

[jema]

Originally posted by �±Títåñ±�™
I have used that tiny personnal firewall before but didn't think it gave me the protection I need as it never seemed to do anything......although zonealarms is a pain in the arse at least you knew it was working.... is there any others out there that aint gonna cost???....


�±Títåñ±�™

The Tiny one is popping up and reporting odds and sods, and seems rather more friendly towards ICS than ZoneAlarm. I like it so far, I tried ZoneAlarm but it seemed to cause a ton of aggravation :(

jema

[Butuz]

Originally posted by NorthernYankee
Zone Alarm Pro user here and it works great for me:D

--NY

Does it protect you from extremely mah00sive 21" monitor-needing siggys on web based forums???

;)

Butuz

[NorthernYankee]

It just might But let me check...Well it doesn't say so I guess it does:D

--NY

[Butuz]

:eek:

Looks like ill ahve to dum this linux boxen then and get meself a proper firewall!! :D

*downloads zonealarm*

Butuz

[KMS]

have used Nortons for quite some time (not free though) & its been spot on, i.e. passes all the tests - easy to setup etc but has some issues regarding hits on system performance so have recently been experimenting with XP's built in firewall & with all the neccessary security upgrades its absolutley spot on, passes all incoming & outgoing tests i have thrown at it, GRC cant even detect a computer & once you have XP its as free as they come

[BigBen]

Originally posted by KMS
have used Nortons for quite some time (not free though) & its been spot on, i.e. passes all the tests - easy to setup etc but has some issues regarding hits on system performance so have recently been experimenting with XP's built in firewall & with all the neccessary security upgrades its absolutley spot on, passes all incoming & outgoing tests i have thrown at it, GRC cant even detect a computer & once you have XP its as free as they come

Hi Kms,
what you say is true about the XP firewall except!! that it fails the GRC leak test :( or at least I can't find out how to set it up to pass this test.......everything is stealthed with the XP firewall though


Regards

[�±Títåñ±�™]

Well just managed to get hold of a 30 day trial for zone alarms pro so I've stuck it on and will see how it goes otherwise tiny personnal might get another shot at the f/w for me... ty to everyone for there opinion in this matter


�±Títåñ±�™

[jema]

I now have tiny set up and it passes all test I have thrown at it, including the leak test.

I use telnet on my local net as well as online games and an ingres server and apache, and mysql both locally and over the net!

It did take some time to play with the configuation until tests said I was locked off from the outside world, but all the legit stuff was working, but I have got there :)

jema

[Roy Givens]

Originally posted by dumbware
What OS are you running?

I run XP Pro and use Tiny Personal Firewall by Tiny Software (http://www.tinysoftware.com/home/tiny?s=3190706199471800570A0&la=EN&va=aa&pg=download). Its a nice one, has most of the features that ZA has, not as big or annoying, and best of all its free! :D
Another one is BlackICE and its not free. You can find that at: NetworkICE (http://www.networkice.com).

This might be another stupid question: but doesn't XP comes with a Firewall of it's own?

[dicki]

your quite right it does... apparently it's quite good to... not sure i entirely trust it not to let microsoft software do whatever it likes on the network though... maybe i'm just paranoid :)

dicki

[Roy Givens]

dicki i don't really blame you. FWIW, i just got Zonealarm installed and it's firewall is working quiet well.

[Roy Givens]

Is there a known conflict between ZoneAlarm,Norton Antivirus and XP's Firewall? Cus ever since I installed Zonealarm, my email server is acting painfully slow. Or maybe it's just my ISP? I do have Earthlink :(

[mackerel]

Roy,

In the "pro" version of Zone Alarm, there is e-mail filtering. Don't know about the free version, but that could be it. Norton does it too unless you have it turned off, so they both could be contributing to the performace drop.

[Roy Givens]

mackerel,thanks for the info. I use the free Zone Alarm, ok call me a cheapo :), i'm not sure, but i think it does the email filtering as well, however to add insult, my wife just sent me an superhuge attachment,plus i set my emails to be left on the server for 3 days :(
It's kinda cool now, I was able to delete the emails from the server,and temp set up my email account to only leave 1 day of emails on the server and uninstalled zone alarm. So far so good.

Another thing about ZoneAlarm: the popup that asks you if you want your AIM,Outlook, or IE to talk to the internet is super annoying, i knwo you can get rid of it, but what's the point if you want protection :)

thanks again.

[Roy Givens]

Well after reinstalling Zone Alarm, no "problems" developed. I think the performance issue was cuased by that game MOH....