Which firewall is best?

BabylenTatarsky

A thread for my brother, he has this to say:



I have recently formatted my computer, and am looking at which anti virus and firewall I should install.
I've picked out my anti-virus, Nod32, I hear from alot of places this is one of the best anti-virus programs.
I was just wondering if there is a firewall held in the same light as "the best one to get" and if so, which is it?

Ta very much.



Cheers.

cozumel

I use Comodo which is free and supplements my (hardware) broadband router just fine.
If you don't have a hardware router I'd probably go for either ZoneAlarm Pro or Outpost Pro which both cost $39.95.

BTW, NOD32 is best antivirus IMO - good choice

Edit: This should really be discussed in the software, applications & tweaking forum

dipstick

Comodo seems to the best there is, especially for free. I use Kaspersky internet security and its a lot better than ZoneAlarm; plus its the one of the few fully working vista firewalls

Nice read here

niceguyrichy

moved to more appropriate forum
personally I've been putting zonealarm on the family's comps for years, always very happy with it.

zaim

RoyBatty

Good free firewall is Jetico Personal Firewall, it is really small and it needs only 6 MB of RAM. Comodo is probably even better, it is still being updated, but it needs more resources.


zaim is funny, as usual

GutterPunk

I always recommend Comodo at my Helpdesk uhh desk.

Nod32 = the sex...

Matth

I would not hold Matousec up as a good example of firewall research, due to his disgraceful practice of openly "selling bugs", a practice considered reprehensible by the legitimate security community.

If not actually a "black hat", this practice certainly marks Matousec as a "grey hat".

He also seems to have a synergistic relationship with Comodo, and an antagonistic relationship with some of the others.


Another one worth a look http://force.coresecurity.com/ - quite complex to tune well, but also controls registry and file/directory access as well as network access - not seen it pitted against any test suites yet though

H3X4D3C1M4L

ZoneAlarm free version is an exceptionally good firewall for the money.

Of course the most secure solution would be to use OpenBSD and use a well configured pf, nothing more secure than that I don't think short of no internet connection at all

dipstick

That doesn't sound very nice lol. Sorry for posting a crappy review, it was one of the few I could find. But the truth is you should never decide just by one review of a product no matter who the reviewer is


Also just if anyone is wondering I don't think ZoneAlarm is a bad product; if anything its still one of the best. It's their lack of support and lack of courtesy against their customers I really dislike. I actually purchased it not long ago because I thought it was the best and the website said "Vista Ready!" in huge letters but here we are a few months later with no Vista support at all! They even took down the Vista Ready crap and they tell me it will be done when its ready while my subscription is being wasted. Forget about it if you ask about 64bit support; they get really pissed off like you said something about their mothers or something.

Rechinica

You should try Look'n'Stop.
Install kit is about 800k, and it only occupies 3-4MB of RAM.
On their site you can download some common rules that you can modify very easy.

I wanted a lightweight firewall - and found it
Using it in Vista with NOD32 AV - works great.

GutterPunk

is it free?

i wanna check it out!

zexx11

I use Look n Stop.[/IMG]

RoyBatty

Unfortunately Look'n'stop is not free (only 30 days trial version). But if you want free lightweight firewall try Jetico Personal Firewall

BlueMak

I find Kerio very good.
My only problem with it is that since I use my PC to connect online with my xbox 360, for some reason the only way to make it go online (360) is to disable the network security module, which is no good.