Win XP firewall advice ..

[BScott881]

I run XP. I've heard it has built in firewall protection. Is that true? (since I've never really seen anything official). Anyway, should I use something else? I used to use Zone Alarm, and seemed pretty good. What would you suggest??
Also, If I do use some 3rd party app, do you have to disable something in XP?

Thanks,....

 

[Silan]

I believe it is disabled by default. As for using it over zonealarm, i would say test them both here or here to see which works best.

 

[HermitGuy]

You should definitely use something besides the xp firewall it is only setup to stop incoming traffic. It will not prevent your system from broadcasting out to the internet if some trojan horse program gets in, not to mention the little nasty's that our good friends at Microsoft have put in. It's kind of interesting that they made their firewall only stop incoming traffic when they could have easily made it work both ways, don't you think. Now for the other part of your question Zonealarm, tiny firewall or sygate all seem to do a good job of managing traffic both ways, and all three are free for personal use. I use sygate now, it came with another piece of software that I bought, I have used zonealarm and tiny firewall I prefer zonealarm or sygate they seem a bit easier to configure. Well good luck and MERRY CRISTMASS. 🙂

 

[MGMorden]

Do any of the free firewalls work with ICS on WinXP (basically I want to firewall the internet connection NIC on the main machine but not the NIC connected to my sub-network since those machines all have to get to the main machine to get their internet access).

 

[HermitGuy]

Sorry I don't know the anwser to that, maybe someone else does but I have a feeling you might have to buy one of thier pro versions for that.😱

 

[Psychoholic]

<< It's kind of interesting that they made their firewall only stop incoming traffic when they could have easily made it work both ways, don't you think. >>


Geez, stop the paranoia. <rolleyes>
Maybe they ignored outgoing traffic just to make it easier on home users who have never had to deal with a firewall.



<< Do any of the free firewalls work with ICS on WinXP >>


ZoneAlarm will if you buy Pro, otherwise the ICS machine cannot be running ZoneAlarm unless something's changed from what I understand. From what I've heard Tiny is much more flexible than ZoneAlarm. I don't really know about these products firsthand, as I don't really deal much with desktop firewalls.

IMO I would get a hardware firewal/router as my first line of defense, then use a software firewall on the desktop.

 

[StanTheMan]

if ics = internet connection sharing, then yes, zonealarm support it even for the free version.
what you need to do is to lower down your internet security level from high to medium.
there is no much security differences between high setting and medium setting, as in both case, your ports are unhackable. the only difference is that high stealth your port, while medium only close your porth.

regarding file transfer between networked computer:

win2K: you don't need any additional setting
winXP: security - advance - and then put thick on ur network card's name.

fyi, I'm using zonealarm now and have been using it for 2 year since I used win98.

 

[sml]

I use the XP firewall on my laptop; while it lacks some features of a real packet filter, it is effective in shutting down a lot of ingress to your box; I tried the symantec http-based portscanner and also analyzed the box before/after with some pentesting tools in my lab and noticed it did not even send RST packets for ports that were NOT open. bueno.

 

[HermitGuy]

IMO I would get a hardware firewal/router as my first line of defense, then use a software firewall on the desktop.

GEEZ talk about paranoia, a hardware and software firewall!! 😀

Seriously it's not paranoia just healthy scepticism, I know you've seen how many little internal agents in xp try to connect to the net that you would never know about without a firewall. Maybe their all ligit but I've blocked them with no ill effects on my system. I don't have it in for Microsoft I happen to think xp is a fine product but to many of these guys think they have a right to all the info they can glean from us wether we agree or not. I prefer to make it just a little harder for them and not just go on blind trust.