Firewalls

[ac1dsp3ctrum]

Does anyone have any reccomendations for a firewall. It hasa to be compatible with XP networks... Thanks In Advance

[ngagpa]

It depends a lot on what you need it for and how much you want to mess with it. The hardware routers offered by netgear and lynxsys are cheap, and offer decent protection for the price and are fairly plug and play. Addtitionally, they offer cable and dsl hookups the added advantages of a router.

There are many software programs applicable to XP. You might investigate this link which seems to offer support for your platform altho being on a mac - I must admit I;ve never used it: http://www.networkice.com/ I have used a number of softwalls and have found them interesting, cheap and apparently effective - in anycase they seem to give me a lot of 'alerts.'

[Focmaester]

Check out
www.firewall.com
they have a lot of links to good resources.

[Euclid]

In my opinion in the world of firewallsZone Alarm is King..You can either get the free version or download the professional version ( pay for it or get creative with the demo version...Im sure there is something that can be done..hint,hint)

[Terr]

ZA is not king IMO... It's only one of the ones which demands less technical knowledge, at the expense of advanced features and handling. I see it as good to recommend the casual user, but if you're really interested in security and don't want to get a real firewall/proxy machine or device, then I certainly wouldn't go with ZA.

[micael]

If you would like to have a nice firewall and have an xtra computer to spare for this purpose I would recomend to use a linux distribution. It demands a bit knowledge but when you are into linux a whole new world will appear and you have almost no limitations :-).

I found a while ago a nice tutorial written by Oskar Andreasson about how to build a firewall under linux using iptables, you can find it here..

I wish you all a happy new year !

[Ennis]

Just a personal thing.

Neowatch

[VictorKaum]

Originally posted by micael
If you would like to have a nice firewall and have an xtra computer to spare for this purpose I would recomend to use a linux distribution. It demands a bit knowledge but when you are into linux a whole new world will appear and you have almost no limitations :-).

The same genre:

A linux firewall on 1 FDD for a little box (80386)

BBIagent Linux NET4.0 (it's free)

I have some probs with it (it sometimes disconnects for some obscure reason, perhaps bad NIC driver) but it's a great piece of software:

http://www.bbiagent.net/

If you set the right security settings this small Linux will drop all packages from outside your LAN. So you appear total stealth on a site like grc https://grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2

Disadvantages: box is limited to do the gateway/DNS/firewall job

[uraloony]

The software firewall discussions can be heated in their debate, but here is the breakdown...

Firewalls I have used -

ZoneAlarm (http://www.zonelabs.com) - User friendly, I have found to be the most compatible with networking (this is just my personal experience.)

Tiny Personal (http://www.tinysoftware.com/ - Great for the advanced user who likes to tweak things.

BlackICE (http://www.networkice.com) - Has had a lot of problems recently, and with all the free software firewalls out there, I wouldn't pay for it.

Conseal - used it for a bit and didn't like the interface, but could not say anything against the security.

Firewalls I haven't used -

NeoWatch - Have never used, but have heard good things about it.
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Another option (the best one) -

Get a linux box to be a firewall/router and get Ipchains working good on it... You won't regret it .

[EvIl eLf]

I am partial to hardware firewalls myself if its a home network get the dlink 804 for about $80 it will allow you to share 4 nodes to the net at 100baset with a dynamic packet filtering engine thanks.

Elliot