BT hub firewall, is it safe to run the computers without a firewall?

tomstickland

I've just installed BT Broadband on my father's computer. It works fine, but I can't run any of the things like hub manager when Zone Alarm is turned on. It just says it's blocked the program. I'm reasonably familiar with Zone Alarm, so I've had a good look at all of the options.

I've looked at all of the Zone Alarm settings and it doesn't allow the BT exe files to be added to the allowed program list. I've looked at the alert log and it won't allow me to do anything with the BT alerts. I've had a quick look on google and a few people have reported issues with BT software and Zone Alarm.

Has anyone else experienced this?

Are there any other free firewalls worth considering. I'm asking because I'm not using Azeurus bit torrent software on my PC and that won't work with Zone Alarm (a well documented problem on the net).

Error message is

BT Broadband Desktop Help Browser was blocked from connecting to the Internet.
(127.0.0.1:Port 1816)

Program: BT Broadband Desktop Help Browser

No option anywhere to allow BT program to run.

EDIT: the firewall on the hub seems to be providing 100% safety, so can I safely run with the firewalls on the PC's turned off?

symy@nufc

a few links here i use comodo firewall posts 2 & 4

tomstickland

OK, thanks.
There's something very odd. If I choose to manually add a program into the
program control list, then after I point to the relevant .exe file then zonealarm doesn't add it to the list.

tomstickland

I've just run https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2 with Zone Alarm off and achieved a 100% safe rating.

The sales blurb says that Norton Personal Firewall is included. Is this running on the router then?

albertross_2

Routers by their nature use NAT, which means that the outside world can't address a local ip address and talk to it, unless your PC open the port and talks out to the internet first. So any nat router would pass the grc test, unless you have opened ports with port forwarding or upnp.

tomstickland

So, is it safe to run the PCs without their own firewalls then?

Actuall, I'm going to leave the firewalls on the PCs since these do other things like alert the user to programs doing unusual things etc.

I'm just going to turn the local firewall off when needing to run the BT admin software. Seems a bit odd really, but I just think there some Zonealarm - BT incompatibility.

wacko911

keep you firewall on, a trojan can use upnp which my be enabled on your router to open a port. Also a trojan could contact the hacker, by making a connection your 'nat' firewall would be bypassed.

John_Gray

If you are running a software firewall on your PC, then you need to put your local subnet into the trusted zone to be able to see other PCs on your LAN, and probably even the hardware firewall in the router to which your PC is connected. How you do this depends on what software firewall you have. Do you have the free ZoneAlarm firewall or ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite?

John

espresso

tomstickland wrote:

So, is it safe to run the PCs without their own firewalls then?

No, the NAT built into the router will give inbound protection but not from outgoing traffic i.e. anything trying to send info from your PC to anywhere!

tomstickland wrote:

Actuall, I'm going to leave the firewalls on the PCs since these do other things like alert the user to programs doing unusual things etc.

Yes click on Help in ZA to learn more about configuration.

tomstickland wrote:

I'm just going to turn the local firewall off when needing to run the BT admin software. Seems a bit odd really, but I just think there some Zonealarm - BT incompatibility.

No, you simply need to give Internet Zone permissions to your router (Hub). Firewall, Zones in ZA. If you don't, you won't be able to use the net anyway.

tomstickland

I've set ZA to allow the IP range that includes the hub.
That works fine. The internet works fine.
ie: the internet works fine with ZA running.

The problem is that ZA is not allowing the BT Hub Manager software to run and I can't get ZA to add the software to its allowed program list.

ZA just comes up with an alert saying "blocking BT Hub Manager from connecting to the internet", no option to allow it, and the allowed program list won't accept the BT Hub Manager.exe file into the accepted list.