hello,

as you can see im new here as well as the world of firewalls. i have some questions. first off i just switched firewalls i went from sygate to this McAfee internet kit that came with virus scan and firewall plus and some other things. now i switched because a few days ago i noticed my system was working slow internet wise when i surf the net the pages open like i was on dial up!. very annoying, also i play multiplayer games online and i noticed much lag and higher pings also i notice much more scans of my ports and attempts to connect. so being new to security i thought sygate was not doing that well of a job cause im one to believe you get what you pay for and since it was free well.....so i have this new software and i feel it does a better job than sygate but after i installed it sunday afternoon around 4pm for i left and returned around 11 and had about 75 attempts or scans to my ports. now my question is, is this a normal amount of "attacks" and if so do these scans have an effect on my internet and gaming being so laggy? how could i set up my computer so it doesnt respond to these attempts or maybe i can hide my IP? so i wont get these "scans". also i was looking at router firewalls? is this method of security any better?