Firewall questions

[lastrezort]

Hey yall

I've got a friend who wants to put up a firewall for his personnal pc... He doesn't know if he should put a hardware or a software firewall... What's the difference between the two?

I've only got 1 pc conected to the internet with a high-speed connection... He wants a hardware firewall... why not take a software firewall? What are the pros and cons for each?

Thanks!

[nothing]

I don't know nothing about hardware firewalls but as for software firewall, try Zone Alarm . It is for free

[AllGamer]

Originally posted by lastrezort
Hey yall

I've got a friend who wants to put up a firewall for his personnal pc... He doesn't know if he should put a hardware or a software firewall... What's the difference between the two?

I've only got 1 pc conected to the internet with a high-speed connection... He wants a hardware firewall... why not take a software firewall? What are the pros and cons for each?

Thanks!

Software Firewalls are not reliable and Dumb to configure, and you need to always keep your PC on, and reconfigure your networking

Hardware Firewalls are reliable and offers a large variety of option for configuration, and you don't need to keep your PC on, and no need to modify your network settings

But the Cons are

Software Firewall, mostly cheap or free

Hardware Firewall, mostly affortable to super expensive

[lastrezort]

I understand all of what you guys are saying, but what does a hardware firewall look like? A card?...

[AllGamer]

like a Switch/Router/Hub

those are the conventional

and yes, there are those that are like a card you can put in the PCI slots

not very common

[lastrezort]

What would you install? For only 1 station... Software or hardware... I'm asking this because I find it unnecessary to install a Hub/switch/router for just 1 station... But i you guys say it's more reliable, is it worth installing a hardware firewall? Or is it just a stupid question and install a software firewall?

THAT'S what I want to know...

[TheMan]

I've never used a hardware firewall before.

Just sygate and zone alarm......Sygate i took a liking to more.

I'm currently not using any type of firewall.

You should grab a free firewall...see what you think of it.....
By the sounds of it....hardware ones are better but more expensive......
Software ones are free.......and seem to work fine (from my personal experience)

[AdamP]

Software firewalls are more vunerable in that they transmit your IP address where a hardware firewall does not (if you choose to configure it that way).

[Direct1]

If you only have 1 PC, try one of the free software firewalls -- they are better than nothing.

Good Luck!

[lastrezort]

So you guys think I should use a software firewall... Which one?

Free = Zonealarm

not "Free" (hehe) = ???

[bushmaster]

It doesnt matter if you only have one PC. A router is money well invested to keep miscreants and the likes out of your system. Back when most of the world used dial-up attacks were mostly random as your IP# would change everytime you logged on. But now with broadband and you being connected 24/7 wether your box is on or not your IP# is now like your home address as in the miscreants know where to look for you ( like the jehovahs witnesses knocking at your door). And a router keeps your PC from being a public address on the web. If it's properly set-up all they see is the router address and the PC'd behind it are for the most part safe.

Just be cautious when P2P apps advise that you do port fowarding for faster downloading. It does work but then you do create some holes.

[davewuk]

A hardware firewall is not necessarily expensive. A second hand pentium 1 type machine or even 486 with minimal hardware will suffice. Gnatbox www.gnatbox.com, Smoothwall www.smoothwall.co.uk and Freesco www.freesco.org all have a personal free to use packages which are based on configurations of Linux. No real knowledge of Linux is required unless you have needs to adapt the package to suit particular requirements. You need to know basic network details ie network addresses, DNS info etc, but once entered you can forget about them bar routine checks of logs to see who is out there! Probably the only thing which is fiddly with any firewall is configuring ports to allow access to things like private networks and game servers. Personally, I use Smoothwall