Software Firewalls?

I am about to set up a friend of mine who has just received her modem(usb)
from the ISP. I have recommended that she uses a software firewall, but
having not used a software firewall for some years (I use hardware router
firewall), I am not sure what is best these days. In my experience of some
time ago, I found Zone Alarm to be very good. Is this still the case? Or
should I just enable the Windows XP firewall and leave it at that?
Thanks

Rob wrote:

> I am about to set up a friend of mine who has just received her modem(usb)
> from the ISP. I have recommended that she uses a software firewall, but
> having not used a software firewall for some years (I use hardware router
> firewall), I am not sure what is best these days. In my experience of
> some
> time ago, I found Zone Alarm to be very good. Is this still the case? Or
> should I just enable the Windows XP firewall and leave it at that?
> Thanks

You will get a lot of conflicting opinions on this I reckon, so here's my
view:

I've used the free version of Kerio for several years. I'm happy that it
does its job well, and it has a minimal hit on performance. IMHO, it's
better than ZA in a number of ways. Distribution has been taken over by
Sunbelt Software, but it's essentially the same product.

However, for a user with few computer skills, I would stick with the XP one;
note that from SP2 it is enabled by default, and will shout at you if
disabled. It also doesn't look at outbound traffic as supplied, but maybe
that's not so important for your user.

USB modems are horrible, flaky POS that use system resources. If your user's
PC has a network port it would be worth trying to persuade her to buy an
ADSL modem/router. She would then have the hardware protection, and a
better system.

HTH

Chris

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Remove prejudice to reply.

"Rob" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>I am about to set up a friend of mine who has just received her modem(usb)
> from the ISP. I have recommended that she uses a software firewall, but
> having not used a software firewall for some years (I use hardware router
> firewall), I am not sure what is best these days. In my experience of
> some
> time ago, I found Zone Alarm to be very good. Is this still the case? Or
> should I just enable the Windows XP firewall and leave it at that?
> Thanks
>
>

I use and recommend Kerio/Sunbelt firewall. It works well with Avast - a
freeware antivirus package.

John Steele said

> I use and recommend Kerio/Sunbelt firewall

I know I am a bit late, but just in case some still learn from searching
Deja/google.

I have been a long time user of Kerio, (I like v2 better than v4) and I am
the one that gets asked to fix/setup all family and friends computers and
....when they go 'on-line'. I often setup their modems and networks and
always install Kerio v2, I have a basic rule set I have made up over the
years I use to get them going (BB reports has something like this as well)
and we go from there, often me never being needed to sort it again because
99% can get the way to make the rules up in less than 30 minutes.

I try to get them behind a 'real' hardware/modem/switch/router
anything with NAT ASAP and the USB modem goes in a draw for redundancy.

I still think that a software FW is needed on each computer to keep
software in check, and for the idiot that just *has* to open spam.

L.

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