Firewall advice

FrankGrimes

So the time has come for me to change my firewall cos Sygate Personal Firewall has been shot down now that Symantec own Sygate, and Sygate was causing problems for hooking up my Windows Media Center Extenders and Xbox 360 (my PC runs Media Center 2005 which is full XP Pro with Media Center running as an application).

I previously had Norton internet security installed and it gave trouble with the Extenders and slowed the machine down a fair bit. I have a wired network and user a Linksys Wireless A & G WRT55AG router (not using the wireless at the moment and have it disabled), and I also have AVG Antivirus installed.

The Xbox 360 site gives full details for setting it up as an Extender for Symantec, McAfee, Windows Firewall, and Zonealarm firewalls, and its been such a pain in d’arse that this gives these a headstarts. I want to stay away from Symantec as I don’t like the company and think its slow.

Is there any other free firewalls that are decent?

Actually, do I need a 3rd party firewall at all or would the Windows Firewall and the firewall on the router do the job?

So am I down to a choice between McAfee and ZoneAlarm Internet Security? Is it worth paying the price for these and which would you recommend?

Tanks.

masteroftherealm

Do you have an old pc lying about? Or can ya source one?
If ya can check out smoothwall man its dam cool and waaay better than the above.
http://www.smoothwall.org/

skywalker_208

Try Kerio Personal Firewall....

its handy coz it lets you see exactly wats coming in and out and from where etc in a handy tab...

Tippex

I would second the smoothwall option.

I've had mine running for abour 2 years and there have been no problems with it at all.

galactus

would second what skywalker said on kerio

FrankGrimes

Thanks for the replies.

Smoothwall sounds good but I don't have a spare PC to dedicate to it - what advantages does it offer over installing something like Kerio?

I'll try Kerio and see if I can get it setup with the Xbox 360. If not I'll look into McAfee or ZoneAlarm - which of these would you recommend?

Rollo Tamasi

for the setup you have i would also recommend smoothwall. It shouldn't be too hard to get your hands on a P2 or P3 machine (which is all you need for smoothwall) and two NIC's. Smoothwall is easily customisable and there are loads of mod's out there for it also.

masteroftherealm

s there mods??
Yeah a p2 pc will cost ya the same as one of the commercail firelwalls.

BigEejit

only problem is that an extra pc is also using extra electricity and has an extra fan .... I use zonealarm and have had no problems with it. The free version of zonealarm is just a firewall, when you start paying money you start getting extra bells and whistles (anti spyware, anti virus, spam protection etc).. it wouldnt be the lightest firewall (from a resource point of view) but its not a hog either ....

Oh, and you need a firewall apart from your router and the built in windwos one because they do not block outgoing ports ....

masteroftherealm

Get an old p2 and change the fan in the psu and its silent.

FrankGrimes

Thanks again lads.

I went to the Smoothwall site but still can't clearly see what the advantages of it over something like ZoneAlarm may be, though I'm sure there are some and they relate to increased security.

I'm cramped for space as it is and an extra case, and the hassle of sourcing it seems like a fair bit of hassle (i.e. I want this up and running tonight).

I've been running mainly sygate for years and never had a problem, though I have been hit by spyware a fair bit (novice users must have accepted something). Would smoothwall offer increased spyware protection over something like ZoneAlarm Security Suite which includes spyware protection?

Rollo Tamasi

masteroftherealm wrote:

s there mods??

yeah, check out the forums. There are loads of mods. Smoothwall is open source .
the only stuff i looked at was administrative mods for altering user rights over a LAN and the like...

As for spyware. I'm not sure smoothwall covers spyware, i use smoothwall as a NAT for my home server so i'm not really concerned with Spyware as the server is Linux. The best thing to do but probably to post on the smoothwall forums. Those guys know their stuff....as you would imagine.

masteroftherealm

Yeah never went near the forums..


/me Goes off to supermod his smoothie