what firewall to get?

[ZeroTolerance]

You may want to read this webpage from Techtv. I also use the Linksys BEFW11S4. Wep did affect the performance of my wireless network my estimate was about 25%. Techtv claims as high as 50% performance loss. http://www.techtv.com/callforhelp/pr...395024,00.html. Although routers are not considered firewalls, they use (NAT) (Network Address Translation). A basic form of firewall. Linksys usually comes with ZoneAlarm firewall which i don't use i have Nortons Firewall. If Microsoft and NASA can be hacked what would they want with me? hehe [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Skunk]

90% of 'hackers' are simply using tools created by others; tools that they have no real understanding of. 10% of hackers really do understand the theory behind the tools that they are using but probably less than half of those could actually write their own.

The remaining 5% of (expert) hackers are generally too busy having 'fun' with the 'big boys' (Microsoft, the Pentagon etc.) to be bothered with you.

Your firewall then, is really to defend yourself against the 95% who are mostly made up of semi-ignorant opportunists. Another interesting fact about this group is that most hackers are like rapists - usually they are known to their victim in some way (ex/current employees, fellow forum members that you managed to upset., ex boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse etc.). Defending yourself against this group is really rather easy if you adopt a layered solution (firewall+anti-virus+trojan detector+sandbox etc.)

Beware of firewall products like ZoneAlarm and Norton - they tend to have default settings that are really too weak to stop an attack. If you use them, delete all of the default settings and set up tight rules yourself. For example, Norton has a default 'Allow all DNS activity' setting. That means that any attack I commit on your computer using port 53 and the UDP protocol is likely to succeed...

So my advice to anyone using these so-called user friendly solutions is that the price you pay for 'user friendly' software is a solution that may not be as secure as you think. Better to do a little bit of research and find out yourself which programs should be using which ports and protocols and in what direction the traffic should going - and set your firewall accordingly. Any firewall software that does not allow you to define such rules (especially on an individual application by application basis) should be dumped.

I kept Norton running for a year after I got my Linksys router...once the Router was in place, Norton had nothing to do or to report. The logs remained empty...so I feel pretty comfy with just the Linksys, and now that we use a couple of wireless connections in the house, we have enabled the WEP and appear to have a fairly safe, reliable internet connection....prior to my Linksys I had a hugeproblem with some people in Romania hacking my boxes...major PITA's.