TalkingSoft.com Forums: Best Free Firewall - TalkingSoft.com Forums

OK, I need a firewall. Which is best, Im looking along the lines of high security bearing low CPU usage. Any suggestions?

My personal fav is Zonealarm pro 5 combining web/email filtering, ad blocker, anti-fraud protection.
Also available as free version.
link:
http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/home.jsp

Good article comparing top ten firewalls can be found here:
http://www.all-internet-security.com/top_1...l_software.html

I would recommend Sygate: (click Free Download)

http://smb.sygate.com/download_buy.htm

It also "Protects against Trojans, spyware, worms and other known & unknown threats", much like Zone Alarm

For more firewalls try here:

http://www.snapfiles.com/freeware/security/fwfirewall.html

or here:

http://fileforum.betanews.com/browse/Secur...0&sortby=rating

By the looks of it, it seems Sygate is preferred over Zone Alarm, which I do not blame them for ... I had Zone Alarm for some time and refused to believe that it slowed down my connection, but I recently found out that it does. I tried playing a game online with the firewall, and it was quite slow, when I turned the firewall off it went much faster. I tried this with several firewalls, and found that all firewalls slow it down, but Zone Alarm does so the most, even if you let the program communicate freely. I currently use McAfee firewall (not free), and I still have to turn it off before I play. If you don't care too much for speed, then Zone Alarm is probably good too. Sygate seems to lag a lot less.

OK, cool. Cheers.

If you are an experienced user, give Jetico Personal Firewall a chance.

I'm not realy sure, is there any good Firewall application realy good??

Hi, Ive just recently upgraded to XP SP2 and the Windows firewall included in it is quite good. Ive had no reports of Viruses, Spyware or anything for the past couple of weeks. I recommend that non-SP2 users upgrade emmediatly. In my opinion it clears any need for any other firewall.

I haven't verified this yet for myself, but I find it hard to trust a firewall that can be enabled or disabled by a registry change or through a utility call (see the first feedback post on the top).

http://www.codeproject.com/w2k/Antifirewall.asp#xx1092087xx

Edit: the thread doesn't mention this, but I see the option in other utilities. If the programmer wanted to, he could probably disable security center first and make it completely transparent if the user wasn't particularly observant...but bottom-line is I have issues with the idea that any program can disable your firewall with a simple registry change.

A program which disables firewall through registry? If any program does this without my permission I will call it: virus.

If you're a big fan of P2P networks i suggest to install PeerGuardian: the safest and easiest way to protect your privacy on P2P.

Yep. Microsoft's idea of security - at it again! That they allow the feature in their firewall that it can be disabled or tweaked through the registry or the utility.

Definite malware in most people's eyes, but a feature in Microsoft's eyes.

How I read the enable/disable of the Windows Firewall can happen by utility call:

netsh firewall set opmode DISABLE
or
netsh firewall set opmode ENABLE

Edit: I have yet to try the program registry thing myself, but the utility commands specified above work and work quite well. And since I have Security Center disabled, I am none the wiser to the firewall being disabled. Such is Microsoft's security - like I said I don't trust the Windows Firewall and what I posted here is primarily the reason. Just trying to get the info out so people are aware of the huge gaping security hole disguised as a "feature", so hopefully people won't put their wholesale trust in it and look for another option.

I tested ZA, Kerio & Sygate looking for a replacement when my ZA Pro subscription expired. I chose Sygate (free) - Kerio is very good but had some difficulty understanding the program & did not feel confident with my configuration. This is simply lack of knowledge on my part. Sygate Free has performed very well & like the password protection feature - uncommon for free firewalls. Shields UP! (grc.com) is a nice site to test your firewall for config problems. Sygate has a testing site for their firewalls & Leaktest is a popular testing program (free download).


Slim

I've trialed just about every popular free Fire wall including some payed ones.
Sygate was the best free firewall, though discontinued since Symantec took over,
I hear some people are still using it with much success.

Zonealarm is 2nd on my list which I have been using for some years now
but I have also trialed the New Free Comodo Pro Firewall for the last 2 months
with a close eye on it.
The process from installation to set up was impressively smooth going, if not smoother than
the slite clutersome ZA. I have so far have had no problems. But if you are new
to the internet I suggest you find reputable softwares to use that have been around
with positive feeback instead of newly released ones.

Zone Alarm has is still very good and easy to use and will run fine if used on
a pc with atleast 1ghz and 512mb of ram. Little to heavy now with lesser pc
configurations.


Hope this helps.

I concur...Comodo Free Firewall ranks among the best even beating out the paid ones.
You have a modest system and don't need extra featuresor that extra bloat, give the free one a try:
http://www.personalfirewall.comodo.com/

P.S. Only prob. i have with it is that it doesn't support Windows VISTA or X64 systems (yet).


UPDATE: Latest Comodo firewall 3.X supports WIndows 32 and 64 bit versions. Cheers

This post has been edited by Mischcabob: 02 March 2008 - 04:03 AM

I think i m too late to post here.Anyways.

I have been also using Windows firewall and its really good for me.