Originally posted by: JackMDS
It all depends whether one want to show ?Plumber? muscles or to take into consideration the ?Small? LAN guys.
Bulldozer is a vehicle
Saturn is a Vehicle.
That does not mean that Saturn = Bulldozer, or that when ever you need a Vehicle you should get a Bulldozer because it is bigger and stronger.
You have a small home Network and you use an Entry Level Cable/DSL Router you get a One Way NAT Firewall. I.e. you have a decent protection from ?Dirt? coming in. You do not have protection from info going out. You put a decent medium level software Firewall you get notified when ?Billy? calls home, you can make a decision what you want to do with ?Billy?.
Few times during the course of Internet work I have to disable the firewall for few minutes. Toward the end of the day I have a habit to look at my WinXP StratUp list.
Well few minutes ago I see a new entry called Bargain Buddy. Looking at the running threads there is a Bargain Buddy program chucking in the background. Tracing the program I found a directory called Bargain Buddy. It has two exe file and 4 dll. Where it is coming from? What it is doing? I do not know, and I do not care. I already got rid of it.
I know how to take proper care of my PC and how to handle a network (already did it before some of you guys was born). If I did not have a software firewall I would have about 20 ?Bargain Buddies? per day.
Along these lines I am afraid to think what type of ?Bargains? my family, and people that work for me will get if there was no Software Firewall on my SOHO Networks.
Being knowledgable in networking never replaces the knowledge of knowing what sites to surf and what not to surf and when to click yes or no.
When I say firewall, I mean an independent device that IS a firewall. Thanks to Linksys, NetGear, etc. other people think firewalls are home routers.
If you have a properly configured hardware firewall your network is safe and a software firewall is a waste.