StarDestroyer.Net BBS

so, i'm in the market for a firewall, unfortunately it's one of the types of programs i don't have much knowledge on. could someone recommend a good, preferably free firewall that i could put on my comp? i'm looking to beef up its protection before i get a new ethernet card on payday, and the firewall is the last thing i need to get on my list (already have firefox, spyware shredders and a good anti virus). so if someone knows of a few (winxp sp2 is not an option) links and a quick rundown would be appreciated.

Two main recommendations I can make. First and probably best, IMHO, is Kerio Personal Firewall. It's powerful enough for most purposes and free, provided you disable the ad and popup filtering (which you don't need anyway with Firefox). The other option is Zone Alarm Free. ZA is a bit more user-friendly, but far less flexible in rulesets and configuration options than Kerio is.

I'm running WinXP Home Ed, with Firefox 1.0 and PeerGuardian. I'm also using a router for my DSL modem.

Should I bother getting a firewall (ZA or Kerio)???

Datana wrote:Two main recommendations I can make. First and probably best, IMHO, is Kerio Personal Firewall. It's powerful enough for most purposes and free, provided you disable the ad and popup filtering (which you don't need anyway with Firefox). The other option is Zone Alarm Free. ZA is a bit more user-friendly, but far less flexible in rulesets and configuration options than Kerio is.

cool. thanks for the links. downloading now.

Damaramu wrote:I'm running WinXP Home Ed, with Firefox 1.0 and PeerGuardian. I'm also using a router for my DSL modem.

Should I bother getting a firewall (ZA or Kerio)???

Depends, do you care about traffice going ot from you computer?

If no then don't bother with a 3rd part firewall, if that is the case then fore some extra security you can activate the builtin FW in windows XP.

I have a router and don't really care about a fw in the computer anymore.

Damaramu wrote:I'm running WinXP Home Ed, with Firefox 1.0 and PeerGuardian. I'm also using a router for my DSL modem.

Should I bother getting a firewall (ZA or Kerio)???

You are running Sp2 right?

If not, you really need to think up a good reason for that. Sp2 is a massive increase in security over WinXP RTM & sp1.

The biultin windows firewall is fine for most stuff. However, it doesnt do outbound filtering. Only inbound.