Re: Firewall Necessity

Tech-Archive recommends: Speed Up your PC by fixing your registry

From: Bruce Chambers (bchambers_at_nospamcableone.net)
Date: 02/28/04 

Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2004 22:39:34 -0700

Greetings --

   WinXP's built-in firewall is fine at stopping incoming attacks, and
hiding 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 all much better than WinXP's
built-in firewall, and are much more easily configured, and there are
free versions of each readily available. Even Symantec's Norton
Personal Firewall is superior by far, although it does take a heavier
toll of system performance then do ZoneAlarm or Sygate. It's been
several years since I've been tempted to try McAfee products. Their
quality seemed to take a steep nose-dive after they were acquired by
Network Associates.

    But, no, you shouldn't run both firewalls. Running two or more
software firewalls simultaneously is unnecessary and can sometimes
cause conflicts, possibly negating the protection of both. In any
event, having two firewalls running simultaneously is most certainly
an unnecessary drain on system resources.

Bruce Chambers 

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"Joshua Sparks" <nacs@nb.sympatico.ca> wrote in message 
news:tYU%b.106283$IF6.3221325@ursa-nb00s0.nbnet.nb.ca...
>I think that one point should be made here.  Although XP does come 
>with a
> firewall for Network Connections, I also use another firewall for 
> added
> protection.  Is this doubling up really necessary? I'm perfectly 
> willing to
> give up a bit of bandwidth speed for the assurance of knowing that 
> my
> machine is protected.
>

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