no hardware firewall????

How essential is a hardware firewall in a home broadband network with 2
computers active for 8 hours of the day?? I ask as my son is not very
impressed with me for buying the BT Voyager 2100 kit from PCWorld for £100
inc a wireless laptop card and a normal card and the 2 adaptors as he says
that it hasn't got a hardware firewall like the Linksys one has!!!!

We have got Zone Alarm - so would that cover us instead?
Thanks for your input folks.

"Graham" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> How essential is a hardware firewall in a home broadband network with 2
> computers active for 8 hours of the day?? I ask as my son is not very
> impressed with me for buying the BT Voyager 2100 kit from PCWorld for £100
> inc a wireless laptop card and a normal card and the 2 adaptors as he says
> that it hasn't got a hardware firewall like the Linksys one has!!!!
>
> We have got Zone Alarm - so would that cover us instead?
> Thanks for your input folks.
>
>

Specs for BT Voyager 2100 modem/router says it contains a firewall.

http://www.voyager.bt.com/2100/downl...0tech_spec.pdf

Even so, I would still use ZoneAlarm or other software firewall in addition
to any hardware firewall. This will provide security for attacks between
computers
on your LAN, and provide early warning if your computers are infected by
a trojan that tries to connect to the internet.

Dick Kistler

Found this on the cdrom manual bit!!

IP Filter
The BT Voyager 2100 contains an integrated packet filtering firewall to
enable you to secure your local area network against intrusion. The firewall
is disabled by default.
IP Filtering restricts access to your network from the Internet. You may
specify the IP addresses, ports and protocols that are allowed access. If
your Broadband service supports NAT (Network Address Translation), then your
computers are 'hidden' behind the Voyager Router and your network is
therefore already protected from most common Internet attacks. In this case,
rather than setting up an IP FIlter, a good quality software anti-virus and
Internet security software is recommended to complement the NAT Firewall.
IP Filtering is really useful however for Internet services without NAT
where computers on the network are directly visible from the Internet.
A secondary use of IP Filtering is to restrict access to the Internet from
any or all of the computers on your network. In this way you can stop
certain applications running on computers on your network from accessing the
Internet or certain computers accessing particular Internet addresses.
To enable the firewall:
Select Enabled
Click Apply
Click Add to add new IP Filtering rules depending on your applications and
the traffic you want to allow or block


"Graham" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> How essential is a hardware firewall in a home broadband network with 2
> computers active for 8 hours of the day?? I ask as my son is not very
> impressed with me for buying the BT Voyager 2100 kit from PCWorld for £100
> inc a wireless laptop card and a normal card and the 2 adaptors as he says
> that it hasn't got a hardware firewall like the Linksys one has!!!!
>
> We have got Zone Alarm - so would that cover us instead?
> Thanks for your input folks.
>
>