Do I need a firewall???

quidsinquentin

Hi all

I'm running on O2's broadband with the wireless router thingymabob (not yet a techie!).

Do I still need a firewall with this please?

If I do can anyone recommend one for use with the O2 broadband?

Cheers

aliEnRIK

Windows firewall would be fine ~ just make sure its switched on

Sublime_2

I'm no expert, but it won't hurt to have a software firewall, as the router won't protect against everything, see here.

aliEnRIK

You should be a lot more concerned that you have some decent anti virus software etc

hippyadam

aliEnRIK wrote: »

Windows firewall would be fine ~ just make sure its switched on

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Windows firewall will not be fine! Its next to useless! Personally i would recommend commodo internet security. Its 100% free for home use and includes built in antivirus....

aliEnRIK

hippyadam wrote: »

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Windows firewall will not be fine! Its next to useless! Personally i would recommend commodo internet security. Its 100% free for home use and includes built in antivirus....

Hippyadam ~ please dont question what you dont understand

Its not 'next to useless' at all. Comodo is a very good free firewall (though I question its av). Windows firewall is also rock solid ~ the only down side is you cant control what goes OUT by default. Other than that its 'fine' and the fact the OP has a hardware router too makes it extra solid

Personally I use PC TOOLS firewall as I like to have full control

robt_2

hippyadam wrote: »

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Windows firewall will not be fine! Its next to useless! Personally i would recommend commodo internet security. Its 100% free for home use and includes built in antivirus....

No, it is not 'next to useless' at all. The OP is already behind a hardware firewall too.

[Deleted User]

hippyadam wrote: »

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Windows firewall will not be fine! Its next to useless! Personally i would recommend commodo internet security. Its 100% free for home use and includes built in antivirus....

Rubbish.

OP - in short a router which has a hardware firewall inbuilt + Windows firewall is fine. In fact it's what I use. See here for a more detailed discussion:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1371573&highlight=firewall

hippyadam

aliEnRIK wrote: »

Hippyadam ~ please dont question what you dont understand

Lol so because i don't agree, i automatically don't understand?

And im sorry but its pants :P

No real control over outgoing connections, so no notification of any potentially dodgy program dialling out to the net.

No leak protection, if you don't believe me try the test here

Besides which, his router may not even have the hardware firewall enabled, As the OP said he's not a tech so i don't imagine he's checked.

So _party_ to you!

Linky to review on xp & vista's included firewalls

[Deleted User]

hippyadam wrote: »

Lol so because i don't agree, i automatically don't understand?

And im sorry but its pants :P

No real control over outgoing connections, so no notification of any potentially dodgy program dialling out to the net.

No leak protection, if you don't believe me try the test here

Besides which, his router may not even have the hardware firewall enabled, As the OP said he's not a tech so i don't imagine he's checked.

So _party_ to you!

Linky to review on xp & vista's included firewalls

I see there little point in arguing this again with the link above (to a past thread) expressing all the points I believe.

[Deleted User]

hippyadam wrote: »

No real control over outgoing connections, so no notification of any potentially dodgy program dialling out to the net.

The term "shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted" comes to mind.

Outbound filtering is ineffective. Software based firewalls operate in the wrong layer of the stack to be effective at what they set out to do. Even mediocre malware will be able to circumnavigate your filters by waiting for you to execute a program that you have already given permission to connect and simply hijack those processes. Funnily enough, Port 80 is always available. Put simply, if you don’t trust an application to be active on your network, don’t use it.

Windows Firewall works with Vista & 7's ways of protecting services by restricting access to resources, and importantly, not allowing them to merge so that a compromised service cannot hijack the permissions of another. A much more effective way to control network traffic. While Outbound Rules are not enabled by default, the protection around services is. It's misleading to report otherwise, but I understand that the vast majority of these review sites don't actually much of a concept or understanding of the Windows Security model and how different parts integrate therefore it's easy to say that no outbound filtering is bad.

No leak protection, if you don't believe me try the test here

As one of the major purveyors of Snake Oil in the industry, I'd take what Steve says with a rather large pinch of salt.