Firewalls

[sinkoman]

I need an oppinion on firewalls. I was reccomended ZoneAlarm, Sygate Personal, and one other (of which I forgots name, but they don't offer updates on their free products so I won't be using it anyway).

I'm currently using the default windows firewall, but so far, it blows. I can set it to not allow a program and it still will . Prior to that, I was using the nvidia firewall but that offered some difficulty.

Anyway, out of personal experience, which firewalls wou'ld yall recomend?

 

[duffers20]

i think sygate personal or zonealarm are the best ones to go with. I'm currently using a hardware firewall which is part of my wireless ADSL modem/router which is fine. What problems were you having with the nvidia one?

 

[sinkoman]

i think sygate personal or zonealarm are the best ones to go with. I'm currently using a hardware firewall which is part of my wireless ADSL modem/router which is fine. What problems were you having with the nvidia one?

Well, I too have a hardware/router firewall, but was recomended to use a software one in addition.

The nvidia one wasn't operating correctly after I updated my mobo drivers. Something went fubar and I couldn't get it to work, even after a reinstall.

It's a shame, that was probably the best firewall I ever used. Had TONS of options, and was supposed to work with my mobo's built in firewall (dunno if that's BS, but I see everywhere that the nf4U's have built in firewalls, and it's supposed to work WITH the nvidia software one).

Anyway, I used ZoneAlarm for awhile, and I compltely hated it. I'll probably give Sygate a shot after trying the nvidia fw one last time.

 

[duffers20]

I used sygate for a while, but I couldn't use it properly, couldn't seem to find the options I needed. I also had some problems with it blocking other pc's on my wireless network that I couldn't override so my sister on another pc couldn't access my shared music folder and her own folders on my pc. The hardware one seems to be find and I have never had any problems with it. (touch wood )

 

[sinkoman]

Well, I got the nvidia one working again, but i uses too much system resources for my liking now that I think about it (I like to keep my pf usage at 100 with no programs running).

So I was wondering, do you think Windows Firewall is sufficient? And do you think that just running a hardware/router firewall without any software firewall running is enough protection?

Thanks!

 

[duffers20]

I personally think that running a hardware firewall is ok. I have mine setup so that it does teh same job as any software one would, but I don't know how good your one is. I wouldn't recommend using the windows firewall since it isn't at all safe, I will try and find a article I found that lists its downfalls, its quite worrying that people use it everyday unknowing of how bad it actually is.

 

[holydeadpenguins]

I dont like firewalls. I'd rather just have a hardware firewall.

 

[WhiteZero]

Sygate fits all my needs.
:thumbs:

 

[sinkoman]

I dont like firewalls. I'd rather just have a hardware firewall.

I don't like them either, anything that runs 24/7 is a waste of resources in my book. If it makes my pagefile usage higher than 100, it's a waste of resources in my book.

I'm just REALLY unsure of whether or not hardware firewalls are safe.

And yeah, if I can ever get this hardware firewall debate sorted out, then I might also go for sygate.

 

[sinkoman]

GRR!!!

I installed Sygate and I love it! Except for the fact that it's a STUPID GOD DAMNED MOTHER****ING RESOURCE HOG!

Are there ANY firewalls that will happily reside in the system try without using 50k of my pagefile???

EDIT: I guess I COULD just exit the firewall every time I run a game, because I usually just disable firewalls before running games, and sygate is the ONLY one i've used so far that will let my exit and start it at my own free will, without having to dig through a mountain of menus (windows firewall anyone?)

Anyway, i'm still looking for a firewall! Gonna give Kerio a shot now.

 

[xLostx]

blackice for teh win

 

[sinkoman]

blackice for teh win

I'm really not in a position to spend money.

And I just tried Kerio. GRRR!!!! ANOTHER RESOURCE HOG!

 

[duffers20]

does that 50k of your page file make much of a difference when you are gaming then, have you done a game benchmark to see the real effect of running the firewall at the same time as teh game because i would have thought that it wouldn't make much difference

 

[holydeadpenguins]

My router blocks all the ports on it's own, whichi dont like.

 

[diluted]

You want a firewall that uses less than 50 kilobytes of memory? Good luck finding that. :| Zone Alarm uses about 15-20mb I think, that's not really that much considering I have 1024mb of RAM, and I keep my startup programs as limited as possible.

 

[sinkoman]

You want a firewall that uses less than 50 kilobytes of memory? Good luck finding that. :| Zone Alarm uses about 15-20mb I think, that's not really that much considering I have 1024mb of RAM, and I keep my startup programs as limited as possible.

Same here, I have NOTHING set to start unless I tell it to, and a firewall would be the only thing breaking my cycle.

And I was always under the impression that the usage screen spat out the usage in kilobytes. Hmm.

Anyway, as for whether or not it makes a difference? I have no idea. I have 1024mb of ram, so I doubt anything is defaulting to the pagefile. I managed to get my memory usage down to 100 and I got spoiled, so now I do my absolute best to keep it down there. The 50 probably doesn't make a difference .

Oh well, looks like i'll be sticking to Sygate for now. I'm STILL taking reccomendations though! I REALLY want to find something that doesn't hog resources.

 

[sinkoman]

Today I just realised how spoiled I was, what with my 100k of mem usage.

I was at a un-computer savvy friends house, and he asks if I want to play Podracers, a fairly old yet still good game. I say, sure why not, but since you're not running it on the best pc (some Dell laptop) I think you should close down some processes.

So at least he knows how to do that. He opens the task manager and goes, "what can I close?". I go, "You can basically close all the 'owner' ones, except for the obvious (he also knows what closing explorer.exe will do)".

It is at this point thta I glance down at his commit charge, and see a nice big jumble of letters. I go "HOLLY COW! WHAT THE HELL?! DUDE, YOU DEFINETLY HAVE A VIRUS OR SOMETHING (I was telling him about virus scanners earlier)"

It took me a while to find out exactly how high his mem usage was (what with all those zeros) and it was going at 120,000k strong.

I guess i'll be doing JUST fine with my 150k .