So If have a linksys router I dont need a firewall?

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Rockafella134

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• Oct 10, 2005

• #1

Well I had a trial of Norton Firewall and now ZoneAlarm. Well the trial of ZoneAlarm is expiring tomorrow and I dont know what is a good free firewall but today my friend told me that if I have a router I dont need a firewall. Is that true? Thanks.

Another question what is smoothwall?

 

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9mmCensor

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• Oct 10, 2005

• #2

I smoothwall is a software firewall. Your linksys routers firewall should do the job fine.

 

Xenocide

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• Oct 10, 2005

• #3

yes and no, you will not have to worry about incomming connections, but monitor what you install on your computer, you do not want things going out that you don't know about

 

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Rockafella134

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• Oct 10, 2005

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Thanks, I understand now. So is smoothwall a good firewall? Is it free? If not what are some good free firewalls?

 

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9mmCensor

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• Oct 10, 2005

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ZoneAlarm and Norton Firewall are Smooth walls.

 

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OkydOky

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• Oct 10, 2005

• #6

Two are better than one.

I would stay with them both.
As stated above, you also want to block unwanted outward connections.
Also, you never know.. you may want to block some thing comming from other computers inside your network..?

The loss of performance running a good firewall is practically negligeble, and usually well worth it. And if you are running a Dual core, even less so.

So yes, run a firewall on your machine.

 

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Rockafella134

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• Oct 10, 2005

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I see so smoothwall is like ZoneAlarm and Norton. Well I had trials of both and they expired. Is there a good free firewall or do I have to buy one? Thanks.

 

TalRW

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• Oct 11, 2005

• #8

smoothwall is not like norton or zone alarm, those are both software based while smoothwall is what some people call a "hardware firewall" (some people will debate if that is the correct term to use but whatever). Basically smooth wall is completly free see smoothwall.org for more info. Basically you take a spare PC, an old pentium with 32 megs of RAM is fine and run this software on it, you stick 2 NICS in it and basically use it in place of a home router and it acts as a network firewall. THe thing is it protects against inbound connections but doesn't block outbound connections.

 

what

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• Oct 12, 2005

• #9

Xenocide said:

yes and no, you will not have to worry about incomming connections, but monitor what you install on your computer, you do not want things going out that you don't know about

Click to expand...

I agree. Even though I have all services turned off that I don't need I still keep a software firewall going to catch everything that tries to go out without my permission. It really is impolite to not ask before leaving my comp with all that info. Who knows what's contained in those packets.

 

Mr.Guvernment

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• Oct 12, 2005

• #10

Sygate or Kerio both have free personal firewalls and Sygate is far better then nortor or zone alarm

also turn on windows XP firewall as well

Routers are good for keeping things out, the issue is people going tio bad sites and letting things in to go OUT to the world, then most firewalls fail there.