Firewall

[Crispy]

I know I should install a Firewall and I do have the internal XP firewall
turned on in XP Pro - But would, say, the Norton Firewall 2003 be a better
bet?

Any views on which has the advantage and what would I gain or lose by using
either?

Thanks in advance

 

[Jerry]

Just my two cents. If you have a dial up service you
should use the built in XP firewall protection. If you
have DSL or cable internet service you should disable the
XP firewall. A friend of mine uses Symantec's personal
firewall software and he finds it annoying. I probably
didn't help much but that's what I've heard and know of.

 

[Alex Nichol]

I know I should install a Firewall and I do have the internal XP firewall
turned on in XP Pro - But would, say, the Norton Firewall 2003 be a better
bet?

The inbuilt one does a perfectly good job of blocking probes from the
outside. But it is not easy to configure where there may be exceptions
you need to make, and especially if these are relevant to just one
program. Nor does it do anything at all about nasties that get on your
machine trying to 'phone home'. So a separate product is better - and
generally the free version of Zone Alarm from www.zonelabs.com is quite
adequate

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Greetings --

WinXP's built-in firewall is fine at stopping incoming attacks, and
hiding all of your ports from probes. It doesn't give you any alarms
to tell you that it is working, though. What WinXP also does not do,
is protect you from any Trojans or spyware that you might download and
install inadvertently. It doesn't monitor out-going traffic at all,
much less block (or at least ask you about) the bad or the
questionable out-going packets.

ZoneAlarm, Kerio, or Sygate are much better, and there are a free
versions available. Personally, I've been very happy with Symantec's
Norton Internet Security 2002 (NIS 2004 is now available), which
includes Norton AntiVirus, Norton Personal Firewall, parental
controls, privacy controls, and ad blocking. (Just the elimination of
many of the pop-up ads on the Internet made the price worth-while to
me.)


Bruce Chambers

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