It's good to have a software firewall even with a router because if anything you purposely open or download in e-mail or on p2p happens to contain any malicious file that plans to call home, the firewall will notify you. If you have 10 MBs of RAM to spare, use Sygate Personal Firewall. It is awesome.

sygate get's my vote.. what can i say, it ownz

Symantec Norton Personal Firewall

I've already voted for Sygate, but it's important to note that Norton acquired Sygate Firewall and is now killing it.

It'll still be OK for a while, but we'll all have to switch to something else eventually as hackers are now targeting apps such as anti-virus protections and firewalls. Products that don't get regular security updates eventually have to get replaced with products that do get regular security updates.

Edited December 4, 200520 yr by saugatak

Do you really need a firewall if you are behind a router?

Depends on how paranoid you are. I always recommend one regardless of the router, because of forwarded ports or *shudders* UPnP.

Not as much a paranoia , having a software firewall (besides hardware) eliminates potential threats and applications an administrator does not want accessing the net. Hardware firewalls can only block by a series of ports , where as a software firewall blocks on a physical level.

For a normal home user a simple firewall will do , and will prevent a significant amount of malicious threats , that some hardware firewalls do not detect.

As I mentioned before... I will always support Sygate , regardless of Symantec's involvment , just as long as Symantec does not load it with useless software.

Edited December 11, 200520 yr by epic

anyone tried Lavasoft Firewall?

sygate get's my vote.. what can i say, it ownz

maybe for it's category, but it's a application control based firewall.

Real firewall are rules based.

I vote Kerio, Free version should be ok for me.

Would had voted for Sygate if it wasn't for Symantec taking it other.

Zone Alarm would then get my vote. Easy to use and effective.

Would had voted for Sygate if it wasn't for Symantec taking it other.

That's why I use the last version before it was taken over. v5.5. Hasn't failed me yet. Except for that time the Ms. clicked Yes on something while I was in the bathroom.

Geek buddy of mine told me on some dweeby computer talk show, they set up a rig and it only had WinXPSP2 on it.

With the IP address on the screen.

The deal was, if anyone could hack it in 48hours, the computer was theirs.

Needless to say, nobody won the computer and apparenlty there were a high number of attacks made.

I dunno, I used to use Zone Alarm, but for now, been using WinXPSP2, tested it on some sites and apparently all ports are blocked with the WinXPSP2 one, so for now, I use that.

I don't use any firewall at all and have had no problems for several years now. There's basically nothing to exploit on my machine.

I just wanted to add that I was a slave to Symantec's high overhead products for a couple years before I found AVG anti-virus. They now bundle a firewall in with their anti-virus that has been working quite well and doesn't tie up a lot of resources.

I used TrendMicro AV/FW for a long time, but as emails concerning a subscription renewal error never got answered, I looked elsewhere. I'm now using eTrust EZArmor by CA (they use ZoneAlarms firewall). It has AV, Anti Spam (which I'm quite happy with), and AntiSpyware in the package--(and it's free for Frontiernet customers). It loads right away, unlike TrendMicro, that often took a full 5 min to "initialize".

anyone tried Lavasoft Firewall?

I'm a tad late on replying to this one. Lavasoft Firewall is built on Outpost firewall from what I can see, has more or less the same features (though slightly less, if I remember). I suppose you could claim it's lighter than Outpost because it doesn't have all the ad-blocking extras, etc.

Best firewall? I'm not really sure there is one. I've tried:

Sygate - I had bad experiences with it; I remember that my internet connection would work for a while, then stop. Remove Sygate, internet problem stops.

Norton - too heavy on system resources. Somewhat unfortunate as even after all this time, I actually like it best interface wise, and how it works on the whole (program configuration, ports, etc) - shock horror!

ZoneAlarm Free - I've noticed it using 15% CPU when I'm downloading a lot of stuff, especially off usenet. Way too much in my opinion.

ZoneAlarm Pro - Yuck. What I detest most these days is firewalls trying to be more than just a firewall. I want something to monitor incoming and outgoing connections. Anything else should be addon software, an extra installation (done say, via a checkbox), or plugins that can be 100% removed. I considered buying it when I used ICS and didn't ZA-Free didn't have support for it, but the last thing I want is a bloated-up firewall for one extra feature, when I'm really just after a way to monitor inbound/outbound connections.

Outpost - Good, but compontent monitoring gets on my nerves. I can't put my finger on it, but I just wish Outpost worked a little differently.

Kerio - I really disliked the interface. Didn't think it's ram/cpu usage was all that low. Maybe I just had a bad experience, but I'll always check the ram/cpu usage of firewalls in different circumstances to see how it holds up. I want something light that doesn't kill my system.

Just my two cents. I'm still hoping I might find a firewall I like some day. I'd really like a way to monitor outbound connections, because I'm slightly paranoid, though I have a router. Who knows if I'll somehow get a trojan on my computer? I always believe it's best to keep your bases covered when computer security is concerned.