What FW to use now?

Hi forum folks,

A lot of decent free firewalls have disappeared, have been bought up(out) to be part of a total solution coming in, or are being discontinued. What alternatives are there for people that want something else than the MS total solution in the future.
Where are the last Mohicans? I still use ZA and in the past found an alternative in Sygate. What are the new stars looming on the horizon?
I have read the discussion going on here. What would your advice be?

Do you think the overbloated so-called total solutions of AV-FW-AS-SM is a good development (expensive ones like NAV present) or are there still alternatives, but then the possibilities get more and more scarce.

greets,

polonus

Hi ! what do you think about R-Firewall ?

Why not giving it a go and telling us how it works (since you ask). I’m sure it can help a lot others. I see you asked same question in here:

http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=17744.msg151305#msg151305 and it looks like you already use this firewall. Do some online tests like ShieldsUP!! is…

LINK: https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2 and inform us about the results. Perform all those tests, and it would be great if you can perform some other tests as well… for example, tooleaky test which can be found in here: http://tooleaky.zensoft.com

Im sticking with Sygate for a while, although as it gets outdated i may be forced to switch back to Zonealarm, which i don’t really want to do as i remember how bad the old version was with networks, although they may of fixed that by now.

tooleaky test which can be found in here: http://tooleaky.zensoft.com

Always nice to know how usless your firewall can be :-, i always thought that stopping your browser from acting as a server would prevent this, shame it doesn’t…

–lee

Well that’s another reason to use better firewall than Sygate is… Kerio stops tooleaky without any problems. Same thing is with ZA Pro, and exactly the same thing with Comodo Personal Firewall… there are plenty of very good firewalls out there, just need to pick one.

Yes but are Zonealarm etc stopping the exploit which is using a hidden IE window to send and receive data to a particular server, or is it just blocking tooleaky/leaktest programs themself to make it look like there doing thier job.

–lee

As I already said, it’s completely blocking tooleaky. Not ZA freeware, but ZA Pro. ZA free fails this test.

I see, ill keep away from ZA free then, ill into Comodo Personal Firewall, as kerio is ending at the end of Dec.

–lee

This is good thread about Comodo Personal Firewall:

http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=17020.0

I also posted some screenshots and performed some tests :

http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=17020.45

That firewall did not protect me, after installing that firewall, I left everything in default and test it using Shields Up. At least around three ports were open and most are closed (barely any stealth ports).

After trying to unistall R-Firewall, its still protecting your PC, it’s still there. It took me a while to remove most of R-Firewall, however I still believe that they’re some bits of that Firewall left in my Registry. :-\

It seems the worst firewall ever when the problem is uninstalling… terrible!

I have been using Comodo Firewall version 1.1.0.01 for at least 1 month now and haven’t had any problems with this free firewall. As mentioned it passed the tool leakey test. I like it but I know there are different tastes among folks. Just my 2 cents. :slight_smile:

Hi neal63, I don’t have that version. Did comodo fix it so the 1 user license works on non admin account also?I received an email so time ago that this would be fixed in next update.

Hi timcan,

I really don’t know the answer about whether it works in the Non-Administrative mode. I logged out and signed in under my non-administrative account and it showed that Comodo was running as it shows in the Administrative mode. So really don’t definitely know as I run in Administrative mode most of the time. You might contact customer support I believe at= personalfirewall@comodo.com and ask and see if they respond to you with the answer. As I have mentioned I haven’t had any problems with it using my “1 user account free license”. As far as I know this is the only version of Comodo that I have been using. :slight_smile:

I can confirm that Comodo would only work with the admin account .
On the system i had it installed on there were 5 users and it would work for the 2 admin accounts but the 3 limited accounts called for the key to be installed on an individual basis for them as well.

The other beef i had was that if one didnt sign off (change user instead of logged off) then comodo stayed on for that user and wouldnt activate for the current user unless you logged the previous user off first.

For this reason I have gone back to my favorite kerio,and am elated that it will still be around beyond year end.

I can confirm that Comodo would only work with the admin account . On the system i had it installed on there were 5 users and it would work for the 2 admin accounts but the 3 limited accounts called for the key to be installed on an individual basis for them as well.

What a toy that firewall, way too much talk about it in this forum. ::slight_smile:

Hi Jarmo P,

Do you or the forum users agree to the thesis that the best solution is a hardware software solution (router/linksys) together with a good software firewall or use an old empty machine as a firewal go between with software like Smoothwall for instance?

greets,

polonus

I know it’s quite popular and traditional Linux users’ trick but Windows-only users have to rely on security routers.

Well, I am using Comodo Free Personal F.W. version 1.1.002 now.
I earlier tonight uninstalled it and went and got Kerio P.F. 4.2.2 free “limited” firewall. I took the GRC “shields up” test with it and it failed with default “limited” settings. Port #113, # 139, #1027 were open. So, I uninstalled Kerio and went back and got Comodo as I listed above. I then took the same GRC test. It passed with “true” stealth with the default settings. Even port #113 which the GRC site said could only be stealthed by Z.A. was also stealthed by Comodo.
I have read the article where Kerio is to be purchased by another company. For now I will personally stay with Comodo mainly due to the differences I saw with the GRC tests. Just my preference. Port #139 was the “Net Bios” port so I definitely didn’t want it open to the Internet. Comodo MAY have issues concerning running between the Administrator account and the Non Administrator with WinXP? It’s not an issue for me though as it shows to be running when I log in to my Non Administrator account. After downloading Comodo after testing Kerio, I noticed that the version # was 1.1.002 where it HAD been 1.1.001 earlier.

We have fixed this bug in y'day updated version 1.1.002. So for whole system license will be valid. And non-admin users won't be able activate license only admin or power users can do that. If a non-admin user tries to activate license he will get following message: "You do not have administrative privileges which are required to activate license. Please contact your system administrator."

Regards
Bernard
Technical Support