What firewall are you using?

[Fuzznut]

I'm currently using Sygate Personal Firewall ver 5.6 on my Windows 2000 setup.

How about you guys?

[foq]

none

[Fuzznut]

I did try using the Comodo firewall and it had a lot of nice features, however it reacted negatively with a few of the games software I ran like Unreal Tournament.

[Baker]

Sygate 5.1

My Vista laptop -- no 3rd party firewall [that is free] works on it. I guess Microsoft doesn't want a 3rd party firewall stopping their DRM phone homes.

That's annoying to me because I don't think companies should be invading privacy.

Recently, for instance, it was in the news that MySpace Instant Messages reports to homebase what you are doing even when it is "offline". All kinds of companies make software that violate your privacy -- with Sygate, every application is denied internet access so they can't phone home.

[Canadian*Sniper]

I run my own iptables scripts on a server box but it's stateless which is why I also have a router.

[Fuzznut]

Sygate 5.1

My Vista laptop -- no 3rd party firewall [that is free] works on it. I guess Microsoft doesn't want a 3rd party firewall stopping their DRM phone homes.

That's annoying to me because I don't think companies should be invading privacy.

Recently, for instance, it was in the news that MySpace Instant Messages reports to homebase what you are doing even when it is "offline". All kinds of companies make software that violate your privacy -- with Sygate, every application is denied internet access so they can't phone home.

When you get time can you expound on why you use 5.1 vs 5.6? I'm assuning you are not able to use it on the Vista system. God M$ is sucha monopolistic big brother son of a bitch

[Mindf!3ldzX]

Routers are enough firewall for me,they are redundant

unless you use a default admin/admin admin/1234 or admin login/pass , then your begging for intrusion.

[spooker]

i use zonealarm. it's one of my principles never to pay for software, and zonealarm is free. I've put it on probably about 5 computers (winxp) and it works wonderfully, though i have seen it not work on one laptop. i tried running the windows firewall on my laptop for a while, since i don't keep my laptop on all the time, but after 2 weeks i did a spyware scan and found tons of crap. i also loved sygate before it got bought by norton (another evil monopolistic company), and recently i tried putting it on a laptop running XP pro and it fucked up in numerous ways.
Security wise, these are the things everyone should have, whether behind a router or not: firewall, antivirus, spyware protection. To tweak performance, everyone should also defragment regularly and consider using a registry cleaner

[foq]

Baker will kill you for using ZA.

[Baker]

If it works for him, then it's good.

I've had (many) problems with Zone Alarm, but if it works for Spooker that's great.

The reason I got on your case for using Zone Alarm is because you'd posted at Singed how you were having problems with it and then you kept using it, and then posted more about the problems!!!

[foq]

At singed I was like 11 :/
ZA made me lag

[spooker]

i dont remember that at all. yeah it had problems with 1 puter i put it on. but ive put it on many others and its run perfect

[Fuzznut]

If it works for him, then it's good.

I've had (many) problems with Zone Alarm, but if it works for Spooker that's great.

The reason I got on your case for using Zone Alarm is because you'd posted at Singed how you were having problems with it and then you kept using it, and then posted more about the problems!!!

Yeah I hate ZA as well. One of the things it did on top of screwing up my connection was it would say it didnt respond to an intrusion or somesuch when in fact the scan revealed it had responded and had not been in stealth. I can't remember if the port was actually open or just not stealth. Whatever it was, ZA reported one thing and the shields up scan reported another.

Sygate is really good at not interfering with your ping when playing online.

I used BlackICE back in the day and that was an excellent firewall. I was using a 14.4kb modem with black ICE and played Quake on Shmack with no ping increase whatsoever.And its on demand window into the internet traffic was interesting.

You could watch people trying to attack DNS servers etc if you were using a modem and black ice would let you know what was going on when you asked it. Fascinating. Like a whole hidden underworld going on behind the scenes you were privy to.

[Baker]

Yeah I hate ZA as well. One of the things it did on top of screwing up my connection was it would say it didnt respond to an intrusion or somesuch when in fact the scan revealed it had responded and had not been in stealth.

I got a blue screen of death EARLY on boot (before safe mode was even an option and before my video was initialized) with Zone Alarm on this computer.

I can't remember exactly how I dealt with that, I think I had to make a boot disk on my laptop; it was a real mess.

On my old machine, the Zone Alarm icon would sometimes disappear from the Windows tray and block everything and I would have to reboot.

And Zone Alarm memory usage would infinitely increase over time, supposedly the result of a conflict with Norton anti-virus or something. So Zone Alarm would be using 160 MB, and they wouldn't respond to the problem (many others complained about this).

When Zone Alarm did work, it felt like it causing me lag on occasion.

But that was my experience, it must work well for others with different hardware setups or different software installed.

Sygate really is the perfect firewall; so perfect that Norton had to buy them immediately terminate their product.

[Fuzznut]

Sygate really is the perfect firewall; so perfect that Norton had to buy them immediately terminate their product.

Yeah its a damn shame. Norton now is a bunch of crap.

As for ZA I believe Steve Gibson of GRC.COM use to be on their payroll. Also it is my strong suspicion that Steve Gibson is the author of the Witty Worm that attacked a vulnerability of the BlackICE firewall.