Re: XP Firewall sufficient by itself?

ok there have been many points made to this thread. I will throw my 2
cents in the mix as well, as it may provide some understanding to those
who want it.

1) software firewalls were designed for home users with dial up access
to the Internet. The PC is directly connect to the ISP via their modem
and do not have a means of a hardware firewall. (I know some of you will
say you can put hardware firewalls on dial up but remember most people
at home do not do that with dial up)

2) Hardware firewalls are designed for lan based networks, which
cable/dsl is part of. Hardware firewalls provide superior protection
than software firewalls.

all firewalls have holes, software firewalls are much easier to bypass
tan hardware firewalls. It takes about 5 seconds to disable or bypass
most software firewalls.

depending on the complexity and cash available, you can make a very
secure home network. a few basic suggestion for the home user is:

1) buy a router. cable/dsl router are cheap and often have built in
firewalls. this alone would provide more protection than any software
firewall. period. and in most cases this is all most users would need to
do secure their home network.

2) if you can afford it purchase a firewall. most commercial firewalls
are expensive, but i have seen the cisco pix firewalls going for $600.
A hardware firewalls is much harder to bypass and in most cases this is
enough to make most would be hacker find another target.

3) Instead of using a software firewall on broadband, i would suggest
using an application protection program. This allows the user to control
which applications can access network resources. many software firewalls
also offer this, so i would disable the firewall functions and only use
the application protection.

windows XP firewall is more than sufficient for the home users provided
they have a router/firewalls connected to their connection, if a
software firewall is what you are looking for.

Eric Eastridge

smackedass wrote:
> "Eric Eastridge" <> wrote in message
> news:0xZse.105650$ ...
>
>>ok there have been many points made to this thread. I will throw my 2
>>cents in the mix as well, as it may provide some understanding to those
>>who want it.
>
> etc.
>
> Thank you, Eric. A Six-HUNDRED dollar firewall for a home user? What about
> a Linksys or Netgear router that provides NAT and SPI protection? Around
> $69.99.
>
> smackedass
>
>

For the average home user, yes linksys or netgear would work perfectly.
Now depending on how these routers/firewalls/nats are setup is could
be a very bad idea to have nat on the same device. if a person can
access nat from outside your network you are owned. It is all about
making your network look less inviting than the next one. It makes
would-be hackers pick another easier target. Personally i like to be
able to configure every aspect of the firewall/router, Create access
lists and filters, explicitly deny traffic etc... just enabling and
disabling ports is no enough for me personally.


Watchguard offers some nice home appliances as well.

http://www.watchguard.com/products/fireboxsoho6.asp
or
http://www.watchguard.com/products/v10.asp

watchguard is another top name in firewalls, it is still expensive, but
well worth it, you can get either of those for around $230 -$250
depending on where you look. there are many companies out there and a
huge price range for products. Firewalls, intrusion detection etc...

ok i am not getting into the whole home security thing, that is another
topic.

Eric Eastridge