any suggestion on good firewall

Message

danda821 · #1 Post by **danda821** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 1:57 am

I am using Zone Alarm Pro. 5.1 on T60. The startup is slow, and sometimes trigs blue screen esp. when I use vpn. The new version of Zone Alarm is even worse. Anyone has a good suggestion of a stable firewall on T60. Thank you.

christopher_wolf · #2 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 2:21 am

Use a combination of AVG and Kerio; those are pretty good and are lightweight.

HTH

kwramm · #3 Post by **kwramm** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 6:29 am

sygate personall firewall is pretty neat and easy to use

danda821 · #4 Post by **danda821** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 10:04 am

which version of kerio is better? The newest one?

christopher_wolf · #5 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 2:53 pm

I haven't had any problems with the latest version of Kerio; seems pretty stable.

ssimon · #6 Post by **ssimon** » Sat Apr 01, 2006 12:38 pm

I've been running the McAfee Desktop Firewall 8.5 for a while now and it seems to work better than anything else I ever had. Try that.

#7 Post by **GomJabbar** » Sat Apr 01, 2006 9:41 pm

Another Kerio user. I have the latest version. I love it.

I left Zone Alarm last year due to system hangs with my Cell Phone internet connection. Only an old version of Zone Alarm did not cause this problem. This was true on two different laptops (a 600E and a T42), running two different OS's (W2K and XP Pro), and with two different cellular providers (Nextel and Cingular). When I used a standard dial-up or my DSL connection, Zone Alarm worked OK. I have had none of these problems using Kerio.

dr_st · #8 Post by **dr_st** » Sat Apr 01, 2006 10:27 pm

Just switched from ZoneAlarm to Kerio myself. Seems lighter, at least during boot, which is now faster. Plus ZoneAlarm sometimes crashed on me during startup.

christopher_wolf · #9 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Sat Apr 01, 2006 11:38 pm

I have Kerio, had ZA and McAfee way back. Kerio is both lighter and somewhat faster as well.

sco1984 · #10 Post by **sco1984** » Sun Apr 02, 2006 1:34 pm

Hello,
If your using Windows® XP Pro with Service pack 2, Turn ON Windows default firewall. More than enough for a desktop user and for advanced users too. Third party tools are harmful sometimes. It's always good option to use default tools given by Microsoft® assuming that your running Windows® XP .

Regards,
Amey Abhyankar.

christopher_wolf · #11 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Sun Apr 02, 2006 1:45 pm

I disagree; the Windows Firewall is of little to no use...You can get other firewall products that are far better in function and less consumptive of resources. I have seen this happen several times with the Windows Firewall where it either is too lax or too restrictive; never a good balance of the two.

sco1984 · #12 Post by **sco1984** » Mon Apr 03, 2006 2:54 pm

Hmm, I am talking from the matter of money. When Windows® giving
you something inbuilt feature, why to spend more money just to buy
a 3rd party Firewall? Well, i seen many times how Windows crashed down and did not recover 3rd party Firewall . Good and famous example is
Symantec's Norton Antivirus Security 2005. I just hate Norton Antivirus First thing it tightens system and it feel like > I am at jail and can't do anything. Norton makes security too much tight. And
secondly slowers down system. Compare to that if talking about 3rd party Firewall & Antivirus solutions, McAfee rocks. I use McAfee Antivirus version
10.0 & Windows Firewall from 7 month's. I had no problems with any sniffers or with port catcher's or hacker's. And why i can say that because my system is not at all slow even my ThinkPad® is running on 256 MB Ram. Well each indivisual thinks different. So it really depends who like what. Some Windows® fans and freaks prefer Windows default toold some prefer traditional ways.. I mean 3rd party Firewalls and other application's. But last year Microsoft® released "Microsoft® AntiSpyware" which tool is pretty effective against spyware's. It removes
infected registry entries with no harm to system. Now they came up with
"Live Care" product... Lets see if they really mean to acquire Anitvireus and Firewall market..Haha !

Regards,
Amey Abhyankar.

christopher_wolf · #13 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Mon Apr 03, 2006 3:20 pm

Nowadays, Norton is pretty bloated; so far I haven't had any problems with AVG and Kerio integrating themselves into Windows, and I can assure you that even the free version of Kerio does a far better job than the Windows Firewall. Being free and coming with windows is fine, however, it still has to *work, and the Windows Firewall demonstrated that it couldn't block stuff that Kerio could easily handle without taking up as many resources as well.

The OneCare Live beta is a good example of free stuff that isn't quite up to scratch; MS Antispyware has seemingly been taken out and replaced by some sort of an integrated security center that has bloat. I tried it for one month and decided I didn't like it because of that.

#14 Post by **GomJabbar** » Mon Apr 03, 2006 5:02 pm

sco1984 wrote:Hmm, I am talking from the matter of money. When Windows® giving you something inbuilt feature, why to spend more money just to buy a 3rd party Firewall? Well, i seen many times how Windows crashed down and did not recover 3rd party Firewall . Good and famous example is Symantec's Norton Antivirus Security 2005. I just hate Norton Antivirus

The OP is asking about Firewalls, not Antivirus. It seems you don't really know the difference. Firewall software, Antivirus software, and Antispyware software are three different types of products for protection against the bad guys. Some vendors bundle these things together, as in the case of Symantic's Internet Security (Antivirus and Firewall).

christopher_wolf said: "...even the free version of Kerio does a far better job than the Windows Firewall." I fully agree with christopher_wolf on this.

See following link on McAfee's site for a comparison table of what Firewall, Antivirus, and Antispyware software products do.
http://us.mcafee.com/common/en-us/html_ ... nChart.asp

Here is a link to get Kerio's Firewall. http://www.sunbelt-software.com/kerio.cfm

Sunbelt Software wrote:Many people have antivirus software, but that alone is far from enough. Even fewer people have antispyware, although this is the fastest spreading threat on the Internet. But antivirus and antispyware software together are still not enough. Even Microsoft admits this in their Windows XP Security Center. They recommend using all three: antivirus, antispyware and a firewall.

DavidNZ · #15 Post by **DavidNZ** » Tue Apr 04, 2006 12:57 pm

I prefer hardware firewalls. At home, single computer (this Thinkpad) on a wireless network (router is a NAT router), so I generally do not use a software firewall. At the office, we're behind a super-serious hardware firewall so I don't use a software firewall there either. I do scan email (incoming and outgoing) for viri, however, both at home and at the office.

When I travel, however, I turn on the firewall in PC-Cillin 2006.

Have done this for quite some time and never had a problem (regular scans with all the majors - Spybot, Adaware, etc...) with trojans, viri, spyware, etc.

danda821 · #16 Post by **danda821** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 12:44 am

I agree with christopher_wolf. The main reason I am looking for firewall is to control which application can access the internet. This function can not be found in Window Firewall.

Thanks for the recommendation here. I tried Sygate firewall (the last real sygate version not the norton version). It runs smooth, but if there is no network activity for about 10 minutes, then there is no connection. No such kind of problem when sygate firewall is not on. I am using VPN, I don't know if that is causing the problem.

I am giving kerio a try. But when startup always shows "HIPS entapi.dll" error.

christopher_wolf wrote:I disagree; the Windows Firewall is of little to no use...You can get other firewall products that are far better in function and less consumptive of resources. I have seen this happen several times with the Windows Firewall where it either is too lax or too restrictive; never a good balance of the two.

techflavor · #17 Post by **techflavor** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 10:06 am

I tried Kerio and ran into a few problems with it. It seemed to really slow down my computer, even though I just upgraded my RAM to 1.5GB.

Whenever I would try to open an application that hadn't already been approved for access (like Firefox opening for the first time since Kerio was installed), it would take FOREVER before Firefox would open.

This was also the case with running something from command prompt like 'ipconfig'--after hitting enter, ipconfig sat there while I waited a couple minutes before Kerio popped up the approve dialog--once I hit approve, it then displayed the output.

Still was strange as hell on why the firewall program took so long before the approval box came up...

DavidNZ · #18 Post by **DavidNZ** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 3:04 pm

I'm eating my words.

At the office yesterday, I enabled the firewall on PC-Cillin IS 2006 and about two hours later it detected and blocked an LSASS exploit packet en route to port 445.

I made a note of the IP and notified our tech support team. Sure, I'm patched from an OS perspective and thus this exploit shouldn't have done any damage even with the software firewall turned off, but it showed me that, indeed, I'm wide open *within* the network without a software firewall.

Lesson learned...

christopher_wolf · #19 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 3:09 pm

techflavor wrote:I tried Kerio and ran into a few problems with it. It seemed to really slow down my computer, even though I just upgraded my RAM to 1.5GB.

Whenever I would try to open an application that hadn't already been approved for access (like Firefox opening for the first time since Kerio was installed), it would take FOREVER before Firefox would open.

This was also the case with running something from command prompt like 'ipconfig'--after hitting enter, ipconfig sat there while I waited a couple minutes before Kerio popped up the approve dialog--once I hit approve, it then displayed the output.

Still was strange as hell on why the firewall program took so long before the approval box came up...

That is quite bizzare; more so since I have heard of similar things happening on other systems, but haven't been able to reproduce that behaviour with either Kerio, Norton, or any of the other firewall products I have tried.

Very interesting...

techflavor · #20 Post by **techflavor** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 3:30 pm

I just went ahead and uninstalled it but I'm going to play around with it some more tomorrow to see if I can get it to respond correctly.

By the looks of it, it seems like a great firewall and would like to put it to good use.

Has anyone else encountered these probllems?

#21 Post by **GomJabbar** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 12:18 am

techflavor wrote:Has anyone else encountered these probllems?

Not me!

hnq · #22 Post by **hnq** » Sun Apr 16, 2006 8:47 pm

I've used the real (free) version of sygate for over 2 years - never had any problems with it. I'm connected to the internet all the time - and often do not use that connection. It's been very good about alerting to what is trying to connect...

I've never had sygate kill a connection due to a time out. I've stopped using any norton / symantec software as I've found them to be very bloated and buggy.

On a side note - someone told me that the MS anti spyware has a back door that sends MS info on your system... unconfirmed as to whether this is true.

a31pguy · #23 Post by **a31pguy** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 4:24 pm

ISS Blackice is the firewall that I use. Used it at DEFCON - if i wasn't hacked there - I pretty much know it works.

Shahafg · #24 Post by **Shahafg** » Thu Apr 20, 2006 2:03 am

i used blackice, zone alarm, norton and some others.

for me outpost is the best product out there, it has content blocker ad filter it blocks evil emails and have 4 diffrent modes.

very recommended if you want a non free commercial product.

stay away from the av\spy\firewall bundles like norton or mf.

any suggestion on good firewall

any suggestion on good firewall

Who is online