Have to turn off Norton Firewall to get PCs to see each other

[kjacobs]

I have a wireless network connecting two pcs-one has win2000 and the other win98 (the win2000 is connected to the router and DSL modem). I have to turn off Norton Firewall to get them to see each other. I tried to add the two PCs IP addresses and it worked for a day.

Do I need the software firewall with the router firewall? I still have the Intrusion part of the software running. It is a Linksys wireless router. I live near a university and am concerned about the techie guys hacking the wireless network.

 

[groovin]

i hate norton firewalls. i only played with one briefly to know i hated it. have you tried zone alarm or tiny? they are much better personal FWs in my opinion. personally, id take an old pc and make a BSD firewall outta it using pf. if youre really worried about security, have you taken the right procedures to secure your wireless network? that is transmission encryting, wireless network ID, etc.... i dont know much about wireless , but im sure the other guys in here can tell you how to do that.

 

[amdskip]

Norton does suck at firewalls blocking stuff it shouldn't. I would just use zone alarm as you already have a router.

 

[topdavis]

If you are using Norton's personal Firewall 2003, then you probably will have greater success in getting the pc's to talk to each other. Norton 2003 has a setting for home networking. You can set a specific range on each pc to accept all communication. If you do not turn this on then Norton will most likely block direct communication.

This is a little different if you have specific rules for certain peer-to-peer applications. If the two machines are sharing files using another peer-to-peer applications that have ports open in Norton, then those transfers will work. However, you may a simple copy function fail under the same scenario.

If you are behind a device that has firewall features on it, then I would use that and give some of the processing power back to the pc's that Norton Firewall takes away. If the device with the firewall doesn't have a protection feature you need, then use Norton for that feature on the pc's and keep the firewaal portion of Norton turned off.

Hope this helps...