ICF vs. third party firewalls

[Ken Gardner]

Does anyone have any strong opinions (or, better yet, knowledge!) on
why the internal firewall with Windows XP (ICF, or Internet Connection
Firewall) is better or worse than third party alternatives such as
Norton or Zone Alarm?

I don't need the extra bells and whistles, such as the pop up
blockers, ad blockers, parental controls, productivity controls,
anti-spam measures, etc., that come with the third party programs.
I'm interested solely in the performance of the native XP firewall
versus the performance of the alternatives.

I am aware that the XP firewall blocks only incoming traffic, while
third party firewalls also block certain outgoing traffic. If that's
the only "advantage" of the third party firewall, I'll take that as an
explanation. But are there others?

TIA
Ken

 

[Marc Liron]

Hi Ken,

yes that is one of the main differences, HOWEVER it is a
BIG one!

ICF is having this feature sorted out in XP SP2 when it
is released in Q2 2004.

PLEASE use a 3rd party until then.

Kind Regards

Marc Liron
www.updatexp.com

 

[Ken Gardner]

Thanks.

 

[Clark Kent]

Agree...

My 1st hand experience -- I was infected with the pe-parite-b virus, nasty
thing. The only way I found out was programs that had previously been
granted access to the internet in Zone Alarm triggered warnings to me that
the .exe had changed.

I looked into it and found the virus. Could have been days and days
otherwise.

Very, very helpful, highly recommended

 

[John E. Carty]

Agree...

My 1st hand experience -- I was infected with the pe-parite-b virus, nasty
thing. The only way I found out was programs that had previously been
granted access to the internet in Zone Alarm triggered warnings to me that
the .exe had changed.

I looked into it and found the virus. Could have been days and days
otherwise.

Very, very helpful, highly recommended

I've seen nothing that shows there will be any changes to ICF for inbound
connections

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...d7-b791-40b6-8364-685b84158c78&DisplayLang=en

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dnwxp/html/securityinxpsp2.asp