xtweaker said:
Have you actually tried the NEW Xp Service Pack 2 Firewall?
You can control how it works VERY well. Can you give some examples of what you can't do with it?
also, you can enable logging on it if you want to monitor, which comes down to the same thing, but you just don't have a nice GUI that shows it to you in real time... Then again, he wants something simple, not something to put on a corporate network where admins need to check the logs and monitoring screens to troubleshoot network problems...
First what i highlighted as bold:
The person you are talking about is a female. Please, do me a small favor, before you post, LURK. You have only just joined, but from just reading prior posts you should have known that Jewelzz is our female admin here at osnn.net.
Also, your posts sounds a lot like an attack, its forcefull. You did not have to do that. Also, by the sound of your post you have never used ZoneAlarm, as ZoneAlarm is not for the corporate networks, even if they wished it was used for that, as that would cause to many problems with random programs.
For a good firewall, Windows SP2's built in one is inadeqaute. No outgoing is filtered, or checked, only incoming, and it is hidden, there is no real way to see what is going on, and why. Or what programs are trying to make an outgoing connection, and where they are trying to go. Windows XP's built in firewall does a good job at blocking incoming, but it is outgoing which also matters, and it matters a lot more than incoming, considering outgoing is how spam gets sent from zombie machines.
Now for my personal choice of firewall? There are none i really like, but i'd put my money with Zone Alarm, as it is something i have worked with, and is quite effective. Only problem with it that i have found is that the network interface can allready be up and accepting network traffic, EVEN when the firewall is not loaded, so it gives other PC's on the network a small timeframe in which to possibly infect you. This is a problem with Windows XP's firewall as well, so it is not like it is new or anything.
X-Istence