Firewalls

Fergie76

I have a Firewall built-in my wireless router, Linksys WAG54GS. I also use ZoneAlarm Free Firewall.

I have read before that you should only use one Firewall. Are these two likely to be conflicting with each other?

I can't say that I have noticed any conflicts.

Any advice on the Firewalls would be grateful.

Cheers.

closed

no, but zonealarm may be giving your machine a performance hit, windows firewall is lighter

trets77

One firewall per device. so not an issue. most users have a router firewall and PC/device firewall. i know i do.

Your router is probably mopping up 99.99% of the port scans.

colin79666

The one in your router is a hardware firewall (well software on hardware). Zonealarm is what is classed as a software firewall. It is fine to run with them both - in fact probably a good idea. The router will stop nasties from the internet, Zonealarm will stop anything nasty already within your local network, such as a piece of port scanning malware on a friends laptop they have brought round and connected to your wifi

Windows firewall is generally fine (I stick with it myself), however Zonealarm will also filter outgoing connections (Windows fw is incoming only by default) so could warn you of something rouge on your PC trying to send data out (no bad thing).

Fergie76

Cheers....