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Topic: Secure, Small Firewall (Read 19245 times) previous topic - next topic
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Secure, Small Firewall

even if i like kerio, i think it consumes too many resources ... so, any other good firewall, that uses the least posible resources? i don't have to say that it must be secure above all things ...

Secure, Small Firewall

Reply #1 –
Sorry, I currently use Kerio, and previous to that its predecessor, Tiny Personal Firewall.

I've never had a problem with either.

I guess it's possible that TPF uses a few less resouces, as it does have a little less functionality.  You can get the last free version here:

http://www.321download.com/LastFreeware/pa...onal%20Firewall
I'm on a horse.

Secure, Small Firewall

Reply #2 –
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so, any other good firewall, that uses the least possible resources? i don't have to say that it must be secure above all things ...

if I remember right, Look'n'Stop is very lightwight.
pardon my ignorance though, but what is the point of having a firewall if you don't lay your priorities on security? a slow system? very limited bandwidth?
in either case IMHO the additional security outweighs that. but well, that's just me.

while I can't comment on resource usage much, maybe you still might be interested in this comparison.

[span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%']edit: spelling[/span]
Nothing but a Heartache - Since I found my Baby ;)

Secure, Small Firewall

Reply #3 –
kerio 2.X or 4.X?  4.X is kind of large and I don't like it, but 2.1.5 is what I have been running for years and it barlet makes a dent in my resources.  I think the file is still on their site too.

Secure, Small Firewall

Reply #4 –
IME Sygate Personal Firewall (free for private use) is not a resource hog either.

Secure, Small Firewall

Reply #5 –
A good hardware firewall from Netgear or Linksys is usually less than $55 US and will protect several machines with no lag or system resource consumption on those machines.
I cannot find any good reason to use software firewalls on each machine.
You can usually even get wireless with Stateful Packet Inspection for under $80 US.

Secure, Small Firewall

Reply #6 –
By the way, as a friend once experienced, loading a new machine is much safer behind a hardware firewall.
You don't have to be so concerned about being hacked as you try to patch and install the software firewall on the new machine.

Secure, Small Firewall

Reply #7 –
Quote
pardon my ignorance though, but what is the point of having a firewall if you don't lay your priorities on security? a slow system? very limited bandwidth?

as i said "i don't have to say that it must be secure above all things"

Quote
kerio 2.1.5 is what I have been running for years and it barlet makes a dent in my resources.

but, does it have security problems? are they being patched? what about OS updates?

Quote
IME Sygate Personal Firewall (free for private use) is not a resource hog either.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=280748"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

AFAIK is being discontinued

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A good hardware firewall from Netgear or Linksys is usually less than $55 US and will protect several machines with no lag or system resource consumption on those machines.

on latin american countries, it is usually more than that on USA, and also, as a dollar is like 3 pesos, for us is like it costed u$s 200

so: i want if light, cause i heat bloat, but i *must* be good (secure) ... also, it must be still supported.

Secure, Small Firewall

Reply #8 –
AFAIK Sygate is not discontinued, you can still get it from the site.
"We cannot win against obsession. They care, we don't. They win."

Secure, Small Firewall

Reply #9 –
I am running Kerio 2.1.5 and it consumes minimal (0) resources and seems to be doing the job.  I can't complain. 
Nov schmoz kapop.

Secure, Small Firewall

Reply #10 –
Kerio 2.1.5 works jsut fine on all OSes, works on XP SP2.  And I haven't heard of any security issues with it.

Secure, Small Firewall

Reply #11 –
i would try it

EDIT: looks really nice atm

Secure, Small Firewall

Reply #12 –
I have seen some very good reviews on Jetico:
http://www.jetico.com/jpfirewall.htm

Never tried it though, I'm using Kerio 2.1.5

If you want a lightweight firewall, just don't fo after Outpost... :B

Secure, Small Firewall

Reply #14 –
Kerio seems to be really stable and have no problems. But, lately i did have one weird problem with it. I stupidly bought Settlers 5 for my brother (yes i regret it) and tried to install that, but the big problem is it wouldnt atucally install with Kerio running. I ripped out the CD and tried it on my old win98 box which also uses Kerio (fyi, it cant run the game so it aint piracy.. i dont think so anyway) and it installed perfectly.

This is the first time its atucally happened.. anyone got any ideas? It did install perfectly after closing down kerio. I did a bit comparison on the file contents in our settlers dirs, they are exactly the same.

Secure, Small Firewall

Reply #15 –
I've had similar problems with Kerio lately (and have begun trying other firewalls as a result). Kerio has a built in application launch detector, if it's activated it means that if you try to launch an application (start an exe file etc) Kerio will stop it until you allow that app to start. Kerio stopped asking me and just wouldn't let the app launch, whether this detection was on or not. This only happened to me on my laptop, not my main machine.
daefeatures.co.uk

Secure, Small Firewall

Reply #16 –
Quote
I've had similar problems with Kerio lately (and have begun trying other firewalls as a result). Kerio has a built in application launch detector, if it's activated it means that if you try to launch an application (start an exe file etc) Kerio will stop it until you allow that app to start. Kerio stopped asking me and just wouldn't let the app launch, whether this detection was on or not. This only happened to me on my laptop, not my main machine.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=281041"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]



You can configure Kerio to not monitor apps launches and changes, and also too many other things.

The problem I have is that some WEB pages don't work sometimes, I try to load it a lot of times, and a lot of them I discover they load with Kerio disabled. Maybe it is the IDS, but haven't tried it, or the adds and popups stopper, don't know...

Secure, Small Firewall

Reply #17 –
Quote
I have seen some very good reviews on Jetico:
http://www.jetico.com/jpfirewall.htm

Never tried it though, I'm using Kerio 2.1.5

If you want a lightweight firewall, just don't fo after Outpost... :B
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=280855"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I'm currently running Jetico. It's a very nice little firewall, thanks.


Quote
Quote
I've had similar problems with Kerio lately (and have begun trying other firewalls as a result). Kerio has a built in application launch detector, if it's activated it means that if you try to launch an application (start an exe file etc) Kerio will stop it until you allow that app to start. Kerio stopped asking me and just wouldn't let the app launch, whether this detection was on or not. This only happened to me on my laptop, not my main machine.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=281041"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]



You can configure Kerio to not monitor apps launches and changes, and also too many other things.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=281053"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I said whether this detection was on or not. 
daefeatures.co.uk

Secure, Small Firewall

Reply #18 –
ok, installed Kerio 2.1.5, and the machine started freezing, tried jetico, but is very weird, asks many questions, it must be less bothersome ... then Sygate Personal, looks fine for now, very light.
 

Secure, Small Firewall

Reply #19 –
Sygate starts to do annoying things after 20+ days uptime on my machines.

Windows XP SP2 internal firewall for me - only firewall that doesn't have bugs I could find (pain to configure first time but OK after you get used to the way its UI handles). No outgoing connection filtering though.

Perhaps jetico will be worth trying after it has stabilized, changelog indicates that it's being rapidly developed at this point.
Microsoft Windows: We can't script here, this is bat country.

Secure, Small Firewall

Reply #20 –
Quote
No outgoing connection filtering though.
just wondering, don't you consider this as an also important point?
are you 'forced' to use the SP2 firewall because it runs stable without any bugs, or are you actually happy with it?
Nothing but a Heartache - Since I found my Baby ;)

Secure, Small Firewall

Reply #21 –
I'd rather live with no outgoing connection filtering than suffer from Sygate/Kerio stability issues. On the other hand, if they are buggy anyway, how do you know that they really do what they claim to ?

Outgoing connection filtering was interesting to toy with but it wasn't really useful to me - I simply don't run software from "suspicious sources" on my machines and use limited user accounts for work so most of viruses/trojans simply don't work. I also don't bother with resident virus scanners - I haven't seen a virus on any of my machines for years now (I do housecall scans from time to time but they never find anything anyway).

SP2 firewall could have been better, but I'm generally happy with it as it reliably does what I expect it to.
I'm not going to recommend it to everyone though, because my configuration is rather uncommon and I can picture that a lot of people do need outgoing connection filtering.
Microsoft Windows: We can't script here, this is bat country.

Secure, Small Firewall

Reply #22 –
you certainly have a point there.

though I value the aditional user control offered by outgoing connection filtering. it simply doen't appeal to me that e.g. a simple intaller or frontend want to acces the net.
for ppl with questionable software it may be another reason.
Nothing but a Heartache - Since I found my Baby ;)

Secure, Small Firewall

Reply #23 –
Quote
Perhaps jetico will be worth trying after it has stabilized, changelog indicates that it's being rapidly developed at this point.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=281516"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


I almost gave it a miss too after reading all the changes it's been through recently.

It wasn't easy to set-up at first since it creates rules for specific IPs and ports and as a result you get alot of pops for some sites and apps. This doesn't become a problem once you suss out how to create rules for apps that allow connections to any IP/port. Also, when you replace an app with a new app it detects the launch of the new app but creates a new rule for it instead of simply replacing the old. Other than that, I've had no stability issues after running it and tweaking it quite a lot for a few days.
daefeatures.co.uk

Secure, Small Firewall

Reply #24 –
I didn't read the entire thread, but have you tried Zonealarm?
--alt-presets are there for a reason! These other switches DO NOT work better than it, trust me on this.
LAME + Joint Stereo doesn't destroy 'Stereo'