best residential use firewall?

whats the best residential use firewall? i know that there are tons out there beyond the name brand, but i wasnt sure what to get. Id probably just be looking in the under $100. My initial thought was Norton as thats what i've used in the past, but im not sure if thats still one of the best. I dont want anything to hard core, i have a firewall on my router and my ISP is nazi like with port blocking. At the same time i dont want something cheap and that will go out of date soon. I dont wanna be to picky but something that takes to long to load at startup would drive me insane. If you have any input that would be awesome :)

I dunno. I've been quite happy with Sygate's Free Personal Firewall. Even has detects changes on the system (application upgrades and such)

thnx, i did a lil research and found an article from pc mag and a few others saying norton was still on e of the best. ill definately look into sygate

Do they say Norton is the best because it offers some additional, useful functionality? Or because it has been evaluated at a higher assurance level? Or because Norton purchased the most ad space?

Those article seems little more than antecdotal. What are you looking to do with what kind of network traffic? If you are just running a basic system with client functionality and at best simple externally availible services... what advantages do you think Norton or Sygate have over your basic packet filtering router? Or the IP Filter built in to Win2k/XP?

cheers,

catch

Personaly I despise Norton. It is a very very resource hungry application, takes over your computer (if norton dont want you to do it, well then you aint gonna do it!) slows everything down and sometimes is a bitch to uninstall!

But thats just My opinion, obviuosly there willbe people who have used it for years and love it. Depends what you started out with I suppose. I find that if someone started out with norton they tend to stick to it as that is what they get used to.

I prefer Zone Alarm (not the free one). Mainly for ease of use/configuration, ease of installation, not as resource hungry as other FW's. My main critisism with however is that its AV has got to be the slowest one ever made!

You will find that everyone has their own preference of FW, the best way to find out for yourself is to install a few (not at the same time tho!) play round with them and see if you like them. Most offer a free version or a free trial.

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Originally posted here by Nokia
Personaly I despise Norton. It is a very very resource hungry application, takes over your computer (if norton dont want you to do it, well then you aint gonna do it!) slows everything down and sometimes is a bitch to uninstall!

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I'll second that.

If this is for residential use and you already have a firewall on your router and some port blocking through your ISP, do you need anything else?

If you want to go for belt-and-braces then a free firewall would probably be the option to go for Sygate as mentioned or Zonealarm. Otherwise you'd just be wasting money unecessarily.

OK.i have test a lot of Viruses that can bypass Firewalls and Norton does nothing!!!!!if you pack a virus with a non freeware exe packer norton will not find it so you can easilly bypass firewall with some backdoor viruses!!!!only mcafee 7 finds everything!!!the new version of ZoneAlarm is Good(but slow).Kerio Firewall is Perfect(if you configure it correctly)!!!!

The most important

1:st have hardware firewall
2:nd have few antivirus on system correctly installed to avoid conflicts
3:rd some soft firewall that can notife changes and set up rulls.

"some soft firewall" = some that works good and not takes much place, like kerio, Sygate or tyni firewall.

I agree with Nokia and Aspman ditch norton, use sygate or tiny.

www.tinysoftware.com

Quote:

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Originally posted here by Nokia
Personaly I despise Norton. It is a very very resource hungry application, takes over your computer (if norton dont want you to do it, well then you aint gonna do it!) slows everything down and sometimes is a bitch to uninstall!

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That applies on most Norton proucts, NAV, Norton Utilities and extra ...

Regards :)