RECOMMEND FIREWALL 1

[chrisjones]

Dear Group,<br><br>Would anyone care to recommend a fairly decent software based personal firewall (rules based, something like ConSeal) that runs on Windows 2000 ?....(that doesnt cost a fortune.)<br><br>I did hear that Black Ice will run but you need to use a patch. Does this work or not ??<br><br>The other alternative of which I am aware is a freebie<br>called Zone Alarm which I am not particularly keen on.<br><br>Any advise i would be very grateful for.<br><br>Brgds<br>Chris <br><br><br><br>

 

[samm]

Try Winoroute from

http://www.tinysoftware.com

- trust me it is easy to set up and works well - it acts as a router and DHCP server aswell

 

[Guest_imported]

I use AtGuard, but the tinysoftware firewall looks good, think I'll try it out

 

[dmor13]

I have Black Ice at home but I dropped it for Zone Alarm. Why, its free and it doesnt returm pings. Its a ghost on the net perfect for Broadband.

 

[samm]

Trust me Winroute is like a babys toy.. you'll love it.

 

[oddysey]

Blackice works well with no patches.

 

[Whitemtntn]

I like ZoneaLARM....ITS FREE and it works very well. So far its been pretty rock solid.
-WhiteMtntn

 

[jornk]

I've seen responses here based on the cost of the Personal FW software. How about opinions based on functional criteria? Anyone?

 

[DEDMOD]

I've been using Zone Alarm too, with no problems that I know of. But the one thing I wonder about is how to know what things I should watch out for. When it tells me something like:

&quot;The firewall has blocked Internet access to your computer (HTTP) from 63.229.222.124 (TCP Port 3737) [TCP Flags: S].&quot;

I don't know if this is good or if I've stupidly blocked off something which should be running. Do any of the other fire walls, or for that matter Zone Alarm's pay version give you more useful information?

Dave Dardinger

 

[wisdomwarrior23]

I use Norton Personal Firewall and it works well on Win2k. It comes preconfigured with a set of firewall rules and also detects and prompts you when any activity such as, cookies or icmp, any services try to access your computer and it gives you the option of autoconfiguring a rule for that particular traffic or service or denying it and a host of other options. I think the others do similar too, but Norton also auto updates its software for any new patches that it needs, so you always have the best protection. Its very functional and easy to use plus its from Norton which specialize in security and things of that nature.

 

[jasonwichman]

Like wisdomwarrior23, I use NPF 2001. It works well, you can only stealth scan the firewall. Also I host a FTP and website on there. Even if you do a stealth scan on my system it shows no open ports, so I think it works well. Another neat feature with it is that it auto blocks attempted hackers from doing port scans for a specified amount of time.

Hope it helps

 

[sixtoedsloth]

i use gblite from gnatbox

it is the software version of their hardware firewall
which is the dogs.

 

[ankmanau]

I use Tiny firewall...Its easy to use if you know a bit about tcp & udp and ports..Its also free. I have used zonealarm its good too and easy to use as well but tiny is better

 

[AlexIT]

I like Zone Alarm myself, but I have the same questions sometimes as Dedmod. It will give me a Ip and port and I check the port list and cannot find anything that should be listening on there. I usually use IP tools to tracert that Ip for future reference...don't know if useful in the future or not.

Alex