Firewall tests by Matousec, Comodo is #1 !

Firewalls are best to be implemented "off box", meaning that you should implement firewall NOT at your box, but a separate box that's connecting you to the LAN/WAN, that way the firewall will not be affected by the inherent weakness/instability/security holes of your system. If somehow your system is compromised, the firewall that's not on your box is still functioning normally protecting you as usual, but I guess this is way to overkill for a regular user to implement...

zzz2496

I forgot to mention those and zzz is correct!!
Routers are the best. Ever heard of "tomato"!
I use 2 Netgears and a Linksys between my system and the outside world.

zzz2496 said:

Firewalls are best to be implemented "off box", meaning that you should implement firewall NOT at your box, but a separate box that's connecting you to the LAN/WAN, that way the firewall will not be affected by the inherent weakness/instability/security holes of your system. If somehow your system is compromised, the firewall that's not on your box is still functioning normally protecting you as usual, but I guess this is way to overkill for a regular user to implement...

zzz2496

I'm not sure that is overkill at all. Now matter how careful you are, how good your surfing habits are, things can still happen. And if you have kids using your computer...

joel406 said:

I forgot to mention those and zzz is correct!!
Routers are the best. Ever heard of "tomato"!
I use 2 Netgears and a Linksys between my system and the outside world.

Routers are definitely the best firewall. I have heard of "tomato"; but I confess my ignorance. I do not know what the term means.

CarlTR6 said:

zzz2496 said:

Firewalls are best to be implemented "off box", meaning that you should implement firewall NOT at your box, but a separate box that's connecting you to the LAN/WAN, that way the firewall will not be affected by the inherent weakness/instability/security holes of your system. If somehow your system is compromised, the firewall that's not on your box is still functioning normally protecting you as usual, but I guess this is way to overkill for a regular user to implement...

zzz2496

I'm not sure that is overkill at all. Now matter how careful you are, how good your surfing habits are, things can still happen. And if you have kids using your computer...

joel406 said:

I forgot to mention those and zzz is correct!!
Routers are the best. Ever heard of "tomato"!
I use 2 Netgears and a Linksys between my system and the outside world.

Routers are definitely the best firewall. I have heard of "tomato"; but I confess my ignorance. I do not know what the term means.

Hey carl :)

Here's the thing, do you know about "whitelist technique"? If I got kids (I haven't), I'd put a fierce whitelist rules in my router's "Packet Filter" list. Not to mention I have a transparent HTTP proxy integrated into my Mikrotik, so if I'm so inclined I can always proxy everything up and no one will ever know that I'm filtering their traffic (unless the hit a site that's outside of the whitelist...). Regarding of "what" you can get off the net... that's for another discussion, not even expensive DPI equipment can know what's the end result (the binary content of a file) of a continuing transfer...

And "tomato", it's a Linux firewall distribution designed to run on Linksys WRT54G series routers. See WRT54G was so famous, so easy to be customized, many people/groups made their own WRT54G firmware image. Several of them are "Tomato", "DD-WRT", "OpenWRT", and several others (google it :)). With an advanced router, there's almost nothing you can't block... You just need to know what to allow...

zzz2496

Thanks, zzz2469. I appreciate the explanation of tomato.

Yes I know about the white list. I don't have kids either - but I do have grandkids! After an experience about six years ago when two of them were staying with us for a month in the summer, I made extensive use of a white list - after I clean my computer! Fortunately, ZA caught the outgoing and I was able to nip things in the bud. This is why I am obsessed with a firewall to monitor outgoing. I know my hardware firewall is well secured.

Ok, I get it... Sorry for my misguided post...

My favorite software firewall: IPCop running in a VM shielding my PC from the bad world of Internet/LAN

zzz2496