Good Free Firewall for Windows XP?

[madh83]

Actually, I switched to sygate, and am loving it. It seems to be pretty in depth as well, but much less cpu intensive than comodo was.

 

[Lemon law]

Originally posted by: madh83
Actually, I switched to sygate, and am loving it. It seems to be pretty in depth as well, but much less cpu intensive than comodo was.

I too used to love sygate 5.5 for my wife's and my computer. The only thing that prompted me to switch was the annoying habit of sygate crashing with no warning. And then only a complete program removal and re installation could get things working again.

While I notice no slow down with comodo, its certainly more intrusive than sygate.

I have been using comodo for about a year now, almost as soon as I installed comodo, it went from ver 2.3 to 2.4. Its my understanding that a version 3 of comodo will soon be out.

But I try not to be a shill for any firewall, but will share experiences on up sides and down sides.

At the end of the day you makes your choices and take yer chances with any firewall.

 

[XBoxLPU]

Kerio 2.1.5

Currently have kaspersky internet security and also a Smoothwall box setup

 

[Lemon law]

While perusing another security site with a similar thread I ran across the following link. I cannot per say personally vouch for the link, but there it is for whats its worth.

http://www.matousec.com/projec....php#firewalls-ratings

 

[Lemon law]

As a real cheapskate like me starts to do comparison shopping on free online armor, I have found quite a few things that may of be of interest.

1. Online armor has a variety of security firewalls, some free and others not. The chief difference between the free and paid version seem to be that the paid versions also
include HIPS protections ( host intrusion Prevention ). And that online armor has a web site and a user forum. And from what I can gather, online armor's Mike Nash is somewhat of a very public responsive guru with a popular following---http://www.tallemu.com/online_armor_free.html
Follow the link and options and there is much material to look at.

2. To give a somewhat alternative view of firewalls and a advocacy of HIPS, I will post the links offered by a frequent poster on www.spywarewarrior.com by the name of Mikey.----------http://www.hc-si.info/stuff/e1.../content.php?content.6
Follow all those links and it can keep anyone busy for a very long time.

3. As a long time advocate of a multilayered security, I do want to credit those more on the cutting edge of current security thought. Bottom line, the bad guys are out to get us
and ignorance is bliss. But shall we let paranoia dominate our lives? There can be too little or too much. But giant clue, when the malware dog bites you, you had too little paranoia.
Sadly the bad guys are getting smarter everyday.

4. Anand tech already covers multilayered security and just the links provided by Schraenfrof who then credits many others with the security resource thread will also keep anyone busy for a long time and lead to the basically the same place. A fire wall is just a part of computer security and how it fits in with everything else you have in a multilayered security scheme is more important.

 

[jjj807]

what's wrong with zone alarm on xp now?

 

[alm4rr]

Originally posted by: jzodda
I still love Kerio 2.1.5

Its free, low resource, never caused me any problems with XP SP2 and works great even after all this time. I am sure you can find places to download and try it out.

kerio 2.1.5 is known to hose hibernation / standby

 

[alm4rr]

Originally posted by: Lemon law

Originally posted by: madh83
Actually, I switched to sygate, and am loving it. It seems to be pretty in depth as well, but much less cpu intensive than comodo was.

I too used to love sygate 5.5 for my wife's and my computer. The only thing that prompted me to switch was the annoying habit of sygate crashing with no warning. And then only a complete program removal and re installation could get things working again.

While I notice no slow down with comodo, its certainly more intrusive than sygate.

I have been using comodo for about a year now, almost as soon as I installed comodo, it went from ver 2.3 to 2.4. Its my understanding that a version 3 of comodo will soon be out.

But I try not to be a shill for any firewall, but will share experiences on up sides and down sides.

At the end of the day you makes your choices and take yer chances with any firewall.

ver 3 is a madhouse ... check out the comodo forums for the ver3 scoop...

 

[Lemon law]

alm4rr points out---ver 3 is a madhouse ... check out the comodo forums for the ver3 scoop...

I am now using comodo 3 with no real problems. alm4rr might also check out the firefox forums where some users always claim each new version is an unmitigated disaster. Even though the vast majority of people are having no problems.

But in terms of history, and after a year of beta testing, the initial public release versions
of comodo3 in the form of versions 3.0.13.266&268 found a huge variety of unanticipated problems. Within 2 weeks most of those were fixed in version 3.0.14.273 which was an temporary version. Then a permanent fix came out with version 3.0.14.276 which is now incrementally upgraded to the current version of 3.0.15.377.

But that seems to be the modern trend in firewalls. Combining the traditional role of a firewall but adding HIPS, process control, and white and black lists. Or as they put, they try
to add prevention.

Both the free version of online armor and CPF3 are designed that way. Online armor is a more simplistic implementation and CPF3 tends to be more of the geek version thats far harder to learn all of the potential settings. I have tried both and they are both fairly non intrusive, easy to train, and both are being constantly improved. To me, advantage CPF3 because it has incremental updates. And because both are freeware, double your money back is not a viable option.

For those thinking of trying ether online armor or CPF3, that choice may be OS specific. Both work with win XP but last time I checked, CPF3 works with vista and online armor does not. But online armor works with server 2000 and CPF3 does not.

Although the link is dated and does not include CPF3, I will resubmit the following link so that others may evaluate how their current firewall rates.

http://www.matousec.com/projec....php#firewalls-ratings