stupid router question

[Tomasz]

Yeah, the Linksys router is very nice and I use one for my home network. For most simple networks, its NAT firewall is a sufficient measure of protection against any inbound attacks (with zero performance hit, as pointed out by Dr. Mordrid)...

However, it does not protect against outgoing traffic (e.g. trojan, DoS attack, mass mailer) that sends data out of your pc.

For this, Zonealarm is ideal: it works damn well, is free, and runs with only a minimal perfomance penalty (~1% lower frame rates in games). Comparing it to that abomination known as AOL is totally inaccurate. The only way it would hose a network would be if you did not put your private ip address range (e.g. 192.168.1.100 to 192.168.1.1xx) in the trusted zone.

[Helevitia]

Zone Alarm trashes my network? I guess that can be true if you mis-configure settings or don't know what you are doing. I have both the Linksys and ZAP. It's worth the $$$ for ZAP since it blocks pop ups, outbound cookies, ads plus all the normal firewall stuff. I have some minor problems with Microsoft's Zone network, but that is cured by turning off the firewall when I use it. Other than that, it works well. Also, there is still traffic that gets through NAT so zonealarm is extra protection.

Dave

[Wombat]

So it uses CPU cycles to block all the stuff that you can just turn off in Mozilla?

[Helevitia]

Yep, if you want to use Mozilla. Don't forget about the other features that it does that Mozilla doesn't.

Dave

[orangejulius]

Anyone know of a lightweight, easy-to-use, reverse firewall?

The original betas of ZoneAlarm around did it,
but then they went and added a firewall for Y2K.

<a href="http://www.compsvcs.com/ps_rfw.html">MANAnet Reverse Firewall</a> sounds perfect but costs $3,995.