Netgear Router and Zone Alarm - redundancy?

[notsure]

Is it necessary to use a firewall such as Zone Alarm if using a Netgear
router. I was reading that these routers have a built in firewall.

 

[Conor]

Is it necessary to use a firewall such as Zone Alarm if using a Netgear
router. I was reading that these routers have a built in firewall.

Depends entirely on how you set up the router. Using a software
firewall makes controlling outbound connections easier.

 

[kurt wismer]

Is it necessary to use a firewall such as Zone Alarm if using a Netgear
router. I was reading that these routers have a built in firewall.

a router's 'firewall' (you'll likely get some contention over whether it
should really be called a firewall) will likely only block incoming
traffic so it can stop things on their way in...

zone alarm (and other software firewalls) are much better suited to
alerting you when something is trying to get out...

can you use them in concert? sure...

 

[Duane Arnold]

Is it necessary to use a firewall such as Zone Alarm if using a Netgear
router. I was reading that these routers have a built in firewall.

What's the model number of the Netgear NAT router with FW like features?
Maybe, you have a high-end model that can stop outbound from a machine. If
you do have one, then no you don't need a machine level packet filtering
solution like ZA.

Does the router have logging so you can use a logviewer like Wallwatcher so
you can review incoming and outgoing traffic to/from the router, since
anything running at the machine level with the O/S can be circumvented and
defeated by malware?

If the NAT router cannot stop outbound when needed by setting rules, then
you may need to supplement the NAT router with a packet filtering software
such as ZA.

http://www.sonic.net/wallwatcher/#routers

Duane

 

[John Coutts]

Is it necessary to use a firewall such as Zone Alarm if using a Netgear
router. I was reading that these routers have a built in firewall.

************* REPLY SEPARATER ***************
A hardware solution (such as a NAT router) is a far better solution than any
software solution. Software is prone to failure and can be attacked and
disabled. A NAT router uses Network Address Translation to route IP packets
from your private IP address (usually 192.168.x.x) to your public IP address
which is Internet routable. It does this by mapping the requesting port number
to one of it's own. That way, when the response packet comes back, it knows
where on the network to route it by looking up the port number in the mapping
table. When a request comes from the Internet without you initiating the
transaction, the router has no idea where to send it to. It is inherantly a
firewall.

That is unless you programmed the router to forward all requests to your
computer (not the default state). You can route specific services directly to
your computer if you need to, but routing all services defeats one of the main
reasons for using a NAT router in the first place.

J.A. Coutts