What's a good firewall for Win2K?

[xortam]

That Linksys site (when its up) had a link to a site that describes/reviews personal firewalls. Look around and you'll find other good references on security there.

[Dr Mordrid]

Here's my 2 cents about the Linksys Cable/DSL Router/Switch/Firewall; I love it.

The router was up an running 5 min after I plugged it in using my MediaOne RoadRunner cable modem service. The only thing I had to do was to call MediaOne tech support and give them my routers MAC address (it's on the built in "web site" setup page) and it was up and running with the default settings. I use a Toshiba PCX1000 cable modem and a Linksys EtherFast 10/100 full duplex NIC.

For those who need PPPoE, IPSEC bypass/tunneling & port forwarding those are in the latest firmware available at Linksys's site. There is also a DMZ mode where you can remove one machine from behind the firewall. You also have the choice of auto or fixed DNS server functionality, among a ton of other features.

FTP's work fine using WSFtp and games like Quake, Ultima, StarCraft, StarSeige:Tribes & Unreal are supported directly. Unreal Tournament Server, Half Life and Kingpin require port forwarding.

Games & programs that use port ranges, Game Zone, MPlayer or DirectPlay like Delta Force, Age of Empires, Boneyards might work in DMZ mode.

As for the hardware firewall I've run it on many of the firewall test sites and it gets a perfect score every time. Shields Up reports this;

"If our IP Agent brought you directly to this page, without offering you a choice of IP's, your machine has only this single private IP address and it is invulnerable to outside discovery, connection, and attack."

The Shileds Up PORTS test also returned that my system ports are completely shielded.

When I first installed the router I ran Norton's firewall for a week and then I ran Black Ice for another week. Neither reported anything coming through the firewall. Before installing the firewall both reported tens to hundreds of hits a day.

Shields Up is at;

https://grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2

and requires you to download their IP Agent program to run the test.

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 26 July 2000).]

[Brian R.]

Anyone have a comment on the review of firewall software in PC Magazine (June 11 or so)? It recommended Norton Internet Security. There were others they liked also. Guard Dog was one. I forget the others. I read it while waiting in a dentist's office.

BTW, my schedule for DSL service has been pushed back a while. Bell Atlantic sent me a modem incompatible with Win2K.

[This message has been edited by Brian R. (edited 26 July 2000).]

[Dr Mordrid]

A dentists office pretty much sums up my experience with Nortons security software. It works fine as far as securing the system, but I found it has a serious memory leak that often brought my system down after running for several hours. Even after uninstalling it Norton caused me problems as it didn't completely uninstall. The agent kept trying to start the damn thing....

Once I removed Norton security the memory leak was cured, but it took two hours to get rid of the @#$% agent.

Guard Dog wasn't much better. It didn't have a memory leak, but then it's such a resource hawg it didn't matter much.

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 26 July 2000).]

[Rick]

I'm actually running ZoneAlarm right now. It seem to defeat the online Port Probes and Scans that the various websites use to test your system. Intergrates nicely with W2K as well.

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ASUS P3V4X,Celeron 366@555, 2.25v, 128mb PC133 Crucial RAM, G400 DH, Maxtor 7200rpm 10GB, 4.3GB Fujistu, Creative 24x, Creative X-Gamer, D-Link NIC, ISA Modem

[Rags]

Someone brought up Norton. I think that everyone that is/planning-to-use NAV 2000, the email protect is a BIG security risk. It opens up port 110 so people can actually connect to your computer. This is a big problem. Just disable email protect and you should be okay.

Rags



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Partnership for an idiot free America

[Jeff]

I have Windows 2000 Server and Professional on my server and workstation. I installed Norton Personal Firewall last week and have had some difficulty. I read on their site in some of the groups that, while 2000 is listed as an approved platform, it is not good for Windows 2000.

The problems that I have come accross are:

1. extremly long windows startup time.
2. problems with my computers seeing each other.
3. complex setup on 2000. You have to go in and setup about 20 rules and then set a pass through rule and then goto the log and create more rules to keep anything from hitting the pass through.

I tried all of the fixes the support site recomends and never got it to work.

You may have better luck, but I don't think it is ready for Windows 2000 or NT Server.

JP

[The PIT]

I'm using Norton Personal firewall and I haven't had any problems with a long computer startup time. I did have a slight problem at first with computers not seeing each but a quick read of the manual solved that one.
I've got to say the manual isn't detailed enougth and fails to explain things properly. At the moment it blocking out going netbios calls but as far as I see I disabled netbios altogether so I'm non plussed where's it getting this from.
It also says if you're using Internet connection sharing the firewall ignores all traffic going to the computer with the internet connection. Not true in my case and this has been confirmed by going to shields up and hackerwhacker.
It would also be nice if it told you what ports you do need and don't need for the internet and home networking since theres so many. Duffers like me have no clue about internet security so being told theres 130,000 ports to look at leaves one a little baffled.

[The PIT]

Just to show how good I am at blocking stuff it's taken me about two weeks to block the flaming ads but finally killed them.
It looks like the firewall on the host machine lets all the active X stuff through but blocks ports. The Norton manual doesn't state this though it just says everything will go through and you'll need to install it on each machine. So if you to block ports only you just need install the firewall on the host machine.