I personally prefer the hardware vs software form of firewalls. Heres why:
Pros - Software
- You have it on CD, so it can(???Legally???) be installed on seperate machines.
- Has the ability to notify you of OUTGOING transmissions from unfamiliar applications or ports.
Cons - Software
- Eats resources of the computer, such as drive space, memory, CPU cycles, etc.
- Sometimes software of this nature can cause problems with an OS of any flavour. Even the built in firewall within XP has some minor glitches at times.
- Loose the CD, ya loose the firewall upon next reinstall of your OS.
Pros - Hardware
- Completely an independant device. Does not eat the resources of any computer.
- Networkable, which means that if you plan on adding computers to your network, you just need to buy a new cable.
- All routers that I've come across in my experience do have some sort of firewall built into it. That said, theres also dedicated firewall boxes that I've heard of that either allow or deny communications, and can be setup with a lot of options. (WOOHOO!! MORE TOYS!)
Cons - Hardware
- Some firewalls are setup to only do certain things, and not allow full, or as customizable protection as you require. If you want to block generally all communication initiated from the net getting to your LAN/Computer, all hardawre based firewalls should do. But if you plan on allowing the general public of the internet to get into your system on certain ports, some firewalls will just not do the trick.
- Most hardware firewalls in my experience do not notify a user of when an application running on a computer attempts to communicate on a blocked port (LAN to the net) There are firewalls that do log internally, and can send log reports to a "LOG SERVER" of sorts, but I've not personally seen anything effective.
Thats some of the pros and cons in my view. But if you've got your heart set on software, Norton Firewall and Black Ice are two products we sell in our store, and haven't heard too many problems back about it. I personally have had bad luck with software such as this, but others swear full success.