wouldnt having those ports open defeat the purpose of the firewall? i know i get alot of alerts from my firewall that really arent anything to worry about sending a message to all of them would be kinda pointless. the point of a firewall is stealth if someone pings you the idea is to give the impression you dont exist once you send a message to them they know your there and will soon be lookin to exploit the firewall. you sta3ted ports 1-1024 being opened that in itself would be detrimental as the most commonly exploited ports are in this range ie telnet netbios smtp http etc. having any ports open is not good as with even a single open port that is accessing the net the entire network can be mapped thru the firewall( if you have say port 80 or smtp accessing the net thru the firewall the entire network can easily be mapped a.k.a. firewalking, having unneeded ports open leaves you very vulnerable even behind a firewall. the idea of open source is excellent tho for obvious reasons.