Wanted to know which is better to use, Zone Alarm's firewall or Sygate's Personal firewall? Is the free download enough? If using a router, do I need another firewall? If anyone can give any advice or comments, it would be well appreciated.
tjymaui: a router just hides your real ip-adress iven to u by your provider. a firewall looks which program(for eyample a troja) is trying to connect the internet. so there is a big different between a router and firewall. i use a router and a firewall on all of my computers. i use zonealam and it works acceptable. ( as it is a for free. a real firewall by checkpoint will cost about $4000-6000) bets regards lippi
Router will only protect from stuff going into your computer whereas ZA can protect from setuff going in and getting out. Best would be both but if I had to choose only one, I would go with ZA.
__________________________________________________ Router will only protect from stuff going into your computer whereas ZA can protect from setuff going in and getting out. ___________________________________________________ babak, u are spreading misinformations. a router cannot help defense your computer. a router just handles 'a bit' like a proxy. so if u get an activex-file helping othters to intrude your computer, the router is no help. its just a help if ppl scan your ip/port. the rest is work for a firewall lippi
Zone Alarm vs. Sygate Personal Firewall Zone Alarm worked fine for me with Win 98. Tried with Win 2000 on a HP Kayak workstation and had continuos trouble. So I tried Sygate,it has worked fine. I just set up a Dell to use for order entry and Sygate is working fine on it also. I didn't try Zone Alarm on the Dell, just didn't want to take any chances as it is also running Win 2000. Bottom line, try them both. See what you prefer. They are both free at ZD downloads. Chasmann
Thank you for replying to this thread and with the info and advice. I have checked out grc.com, very interesting and useful. Thank you once again!
zone alarm is so easy & reliable & efficacious that i would not even consider anything else. it works seemlessly in the background, except for the splash screen reminder on boot you'll forget about it. an absolutely great program ... and FREE.
I think what Babak meant was to infer was that a router is frequently a firewall - as are most of the common "Internet Gateways" available. They are routers because the do NAT (Network Address Translation) and they are considered firewalls because they do port blocking/forwarding, which is a subset of firewalling. However, you are correct that most of these devices will not detect connections that are initiated from behind the gateway. Hence the need for the firewall software. Mike
bullfighter, i absolutely agree. but as i saw that most times 'cheap' routers were discussed, i guess that especially these lowcost router dont have the cap to block ports. a $2000 cisco-router certainly does. i wanted to point out that a router is not really made for help your system. it s only save in combining to a firewall. sure, there a also router including that, but im sure, these routers were not discussed. that was what i meant 'it cant really help'. and i tried to explain the basic function. what i typed was in no way meant as an attack to anyone ! lippi