Its a pretty simple question, why do so many people use software firewalls?
The best firewall you can have is a perimeter firewall, this is also called a hardware firewall. The hardware firewall sits between the cable or dsl modem and your network. Any good hardware firewall should do NAT translation and will not respond to any kind of request from the outside world.
So when someone ask "what is the best firewall" - and people post stuff like macafee or zonealarm I am a little confused. The proper answer should be more like firebox, netgear, linksys, D-link, 3com and cisco.
Well it depends really. Are you talking home use or server use? Hardware firewalls are certainly more efficient but in some cases they are cost prohibitive. At a server level most providers can charge just as much for a hardware firewall as they will a server.
For home use a firewall isn't even needed in most cases. Just about everyone is running a router now and those can come with basic firewalls too.
Makes them feel safe, its more customizable in ways. would be my best guesses, and its not like hardware firewalls are advertised half as much as software firewalls.
I don't use them. I don't even use an anti-virus in my desktop. I had AVG but I never updated it since the software started asking to update AVG. Never had problems.. maybe virus noticed I don't care about.. virus, lol. Anyway, yeah, I think a firewall garbage if you don't properly use it. Like for server thingies and all that.. eh.
A router is like all you need, but for my piece of mind Windows Firewall, but thats about it.
I have a wireless modem that I got from AT&T and it comes with a basic firewall. I really haven't took a look at the settings for awhile but I prefer always having a firewall installed on every computer I own.
I should go take a look now. lol
(02-03-2009 12:37 PM)Labrocca Wrote: [ -> ]Well it depends really. Are you talking home use or server use? Hardware firewalls are certainly more efficient but in some cases they are cost prohibitive. At a server level most providers can charge just as much for a hardware firewall as they will a server.
For home use a firewall isn't even needed in most cases. Just about everyone is running a router now and those can come with basic firewalls too.
You have only shown 2 examples. What about the office with 100 workstations, 10 shared printers and 5 servers? Nobody from the outside world needs access to the servers or printers.
In that type of situation it would be much easier to set up a hardware firewall that has NAT and intrusion detection. Using software firewalls could be a nightmare in an office situation. Especially when there is a windows active directory and people have roaming profiles.
As for not everyone needs a firewall????? Were you into computers when the slammer worm was going around? It used a flaw in the sql database server to infect computers. But, it could infect workstations and servers, not just sql servers. In 10 minutes this worm infected over 75,000 computers around the world. If you did not have a firewall or have the update from microsoft installed your windows 2000 and XP computer was infected. Banks, air ports, ATM machines (just to name a few) around the world were shut down. This worm had a major impact on the entire world, all because people did not patch or firewall their computers and servers.
(02-03-2009 11:01 AM)~kev~ Wrote: [ -> ]Its a pretty simple question, why do so many people use software firewalls?
The best firewall you can have is a perimeter firewall, this is also called a hardware firewall. The hardware firewall sits between the cable or dsl modem and your network. Any good hardware firewall should do NAT translation and will not respond to any kind of request from the outside world.
So when someone ask "what is the best firewall" - and people post stuff like macafee or zonealarm I am a little confused. The proper answer should be more like firebox, netgear, linksys, D-link, 3com and cisco.
(02-03-2009 12:37 PM)Labrocca Wrote: [ -> ]Well it depends really. Are you talking home use or server use? Hardware firewalls are certainly more efficient but in some cases they are cost prohibitive. At a server level most providers can charge just as much for a hardware firewall as they will a server.
For home use a firewall isn't even needed in most cases. Just about everyone is running a router now and those can come with basic firewalls too.
OK I have my cable modem and a networking router, Belkin wireless G plus. I'm using McAfee on my computer. I know the Belkin has a firewall because we had to configure it when networking the computers in the house to it.
Now this kind of stuff is so confusing to me, or at least it has been from the sources of knowledge I've learned from!
Anyway, by what the two of you say, I'm thinking I've a redundant firewall and the Belkin is taking care of both of our computers? The other computer does not use any virus protection nor does it use a firewall - it's a really old computer and only used rarely - but has never gotten any 'boogey men' in there when we do install a program temporarily to check.
(We do a temp install of virus programs because of the limited amount of space and resourses these things pull from the old boy. It's got a tiny hard drive and really limited RAM and it's only used on occasion to access the internet. It's used more for my boyfriends off line stuff which works just fine until we can afford to upgrade me in the future. (I'm just waiting for windows 7 to come out because I can't stand vista!)
Should I take out the McAfee too?
Twitchin Kitten - your Belkin is protecting your network from the internet (if its set up right). When a home router is connected properly, all of the computers on the network should have a 192.168., 10., or a 172. IP address.
I have seen people that bought an extra switch or hub, plugged all of their computers into that, and then connected both the cable modem and the extra switch to the lan ports of the router. This caused all of the home computers to grab a public IP address.
When setup up properly, all of the computers on the network should have a "private" IP address.
See this link for what a private IP means -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_network
All of the home computers should have antivirus on them, but not software firewalls. If you have a Belkin that is acting like a hardware firewall, then you do not really need a software firewall.
I have not ran a software firewall in 7 years. Nor do we use them here at the office. Everything is protected by a hardware firewall that sits at the front of the network.
(02-04-2009 11:36 AM)~kev~ Wrote: [ -> ]Twitchin Kitten - your Belkin is protecting your network from the internet (if its set up right). When a home router is connected properly, all of the computers on the network should have a 192.168., 10., or a 172. IP address.
When setup up properly, all of the computers on the network should have a "private" IP address.
Yes! we do start with 192.....
I just checked the book for Belkin for firewall settings but I can't find them. That's the boyfriends "job" really because I don't understand all that stuff but he does this for his job installing and setting up surveillance and security systems so he's got knowledge in all this.
I'm going to show this to him too.
Glad to know I do not need all that extra stuff in my computer!
Going to take out the McAfee now too. I like to keep as little as possible clogging my computer's space and brain!