Is 7's firewall enough?

CarlTR6 · 19 May 2010

zzz2496 said:

Carl, since his question is about whether Windows firewall is enough or not, I still say that it's enough for a regular user, accompanied by a hardware firewall or not, it still provides a good defense for your computer against all those bad things out there. To have an additional hardware router is better, but for all I know - no consumer class tiny router box provides anything more than "beginner" firewall. Having said that, it is still better to have a beginner box covering you than just rely on Windows Firewall... This is getting no where, is it?

zzz2496

Ps. Carl, if you have some spare money, I suggest you to try Mikrotik - You can learn a lot about firewalls using it's software. If you want, you can try the software for free IIRC. Put it in a VM or old PC, I can show you what a "real" firewall can do.

I don't have any extra $$$; but I would like to try it.

jsmoline · 19 May 2010

Thank you, Carl
I agree with you on the third party firewall. I already have Online Armor configured. It seems to do a good job and passes the leak test. I don't mind digging a little bit deep and changing a few settings as in Windows firewall, but if I don't have it on file as to how I did it and the proper way to change things back, well you know...... Thanks for all your help,
John

CarlTR6 · 19 May 2010

You are welcome, John.

I run a third party firewall to block going though my hardware firewall does pass the leak test. I will eventually take the time to learn how to do the rules in the Windows firewall and when I am satisfied, I will drop the third party firewall, which is Comodo by the way.

You should be well protected now. Happy computing.

si8mon · 20 May 2010

I know this is not related to the thread.

But can anybody tell me how to test my router's firewall to check if it's correctly configured?

Thanks

derekimo · 20 May 2010

si8mon said:

I know this is not related to the thread. But can anybody tell me how to test my router's firewall to check if it's correctly configured?

Thanks

Here's a link to check out,

https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2

And some info about firewalls,

https://www.sevenforums.com/security-...d-version.html

Other than that I'm sure someone with more knowledge about it can help you.

si8mon · 20 May 2010

derekimo said:

Here's a link to check out,

https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2

And some info about firewalls,

https://www.sevenforums.com/security-...d-version.html

Other than that I'm sure someone with more knowledge about it can help you.

Thanks for the links. When i tested my firewall on grc.com and my computer seems to have a great firewall! All my service ports were detected as "stealth", grc couldn't send me spam, and in the file sharing test they couldn't detect my ports and were unable to connect to NetBios (grc said this was an excellent result).

So my Firewall seems to be up to scratch.

derekimo · 20 May 2010

si8mon said:

derekimo said:

Here's a link to check out,

https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2

And some info about firewalls,

https://www.sevenforums.com/security-...d-version.html

Other than that I'm sure someone with more knowledge about it can help you.

Thanks for the links. When i tested my firewall on grc.com and my computer seems to have a great firewall! All my service ports were detected as "stealth", grc couldn't send me spam, and in the file sharing test they couldn't detect my ports and were unable to connect to NetBios (grc said this was an excellent result).

So my Firewall seems to be up to scratch.

Good to hear.

CarlTR6 · 20 May 2010

si8mon said:

derekimo said:

Here's a link to check out,

https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2

And some info about firewalls,

https://www.sevenforums.com/security-...d-version.html

Other than that I'm sure someone with more knowledge about it can help you.

Thanks for the links. When i tested my firewall on grc.com and my computer seems to have a great firewall! All my service ports were detected as "stealth", grc couldn't send me spam, and in the file sharing test they couldn't detect my ports and were unable to connect to NetBios (grc said this was an excellent result).

So my Firewall seems to be up to scratch.

Excellent!

jsmoline · 20 May 2010

Sounds like you did the shields up test. Mine was also stealthed. The firewall test is called leak test. It's a little test that you have to download. That's the one that will tell you if your firewall is working. You can be in stealth mode and totally safe from inbound attacks, yet still fail the leak test. I would download leak test and try again. That's what happened to me.

si8mon · 21 May 2010

jsmoline said:

Sounds like you did the shields up test. Mine was also stealthed. The firewall test is called leak test. It's a little test that you have to download. That's the one that will tell you if your firewall is working. You can be in stealth mode and totally safe from inbound attacks, yet still fail the leak test. I would download leak test and try again. That's what happened to me.

Thanks for the info. My firewall failed me!!!

Any ideas on how i could improve my firewall?

Thanks