Re: alternate to firewall?

ashecorven wrote:
> Thankyou VB, james and casey for your responses.
>
> I should have explained some more. I have being using tiny firewall for
> quite a while but now i have bought a router and i do believe (please
> correct me if i'm wrong) i don't need the "main" use of the firewall
> anymore.

that's 90% right
'Home Routers' block incoming, (the main security advantage)

Thoguh if you wanted to run a server, then you migt want to tell your
software firewall to restrict access so that it's not open to any IP.

And also, the PFW offers a second layer of security.

What you need or don't need is relative to you. But if you were
runnign servers and you don't want anybody to connect to them, then you
would need a firewall.

And you will probably want to run servers. Running an FTP or similar
server is almost the only easy way to transfer files. And you wouldn't
want anybody conecting, so a firewall blocking or restricting incoming
is important.

>But tiny like other firewall products i have used in the past (ZA,
> Sygate) it pops up when a new program starts and asks whether it is
> trustworthy etc. or if the file has changed since the last time is was run
> etc. I find this quite useful and was wondering whether there were any
> programs that did JUST that.

that is blocking outgoing and prompting with a popup
there are no programs to block just outgoing. So your software firewall
would be blocking incoming superfluously/redundantly . The incoming
packets wouldn't actually reach your PFW, they would stop at the
router.
your PFW won't use up much resources from blocking incoming (especially
since there's nothing to block if your router is stopping it and you
don't want it to reach one of your servers)

> However i would like to know which firewall software is currently regarded
> as the best. I would rather a firewall that uses minimum system resources.
> Any trustworthy third-party websites with features, effectiveness, etc?

I just ask a few people, they usually rate Sygate very highly. I've
heard Kerio rated highly. I prefer sygate, nice gui.

but, I don't think sygate prompts when a file has changed like your
current PFW does!
sygate does has a nice port logger updated in real time. maybe some
other PFWs don't have that. The windows firewall doesn't.

There is debate as to whether it's worth blocking outgoing at all. See
recent threads where VB demonstrates how a malicious program can easily
get aroudn this.

You shouldn't worry about a firewall using resources blocking incoming.
It really doesn't use much resources. I know sygate has an option to
"allow all" but that'd allow all incoming and outgoing. Leaving you
with the port logger as the only feature left!
Received on Thu Sep 29 20:11:01 2005