Firewall Needed! Hardware Only!

LibKill | 09-05-03 | LibKill

[LibKill]

I was enjoying the benefits of Free Republic, when a system pop-up said "VSMON has failed..." or something like that.

The meaning of that is that my ZoneAlarm software firewall had failed. I had to shut down fast.

This has happened infrequently, but it has happened one time too many.

I am in the market for a hardware firewall. I want one that can pass the tests found here Gibson Research Corporation. (Will open in a new window.)

I am using a DSL modem with an ethernet card.

I can spend around $100.

Please help, FRiends.

[LibKill]

BTW, is there any way to disable auto-startup of CD's/DVD's under Windows XP?

You have me there, no idea. I use XP at work but the computer there is recent (home computer is 5 years old) and at work there are some wonderful techs who solve any problem in seconds.

[Prodigal Son]

XP. But I never bothered with the built in firewall. I'm not sure why. Just some sort of built ingrained belief that the Microsoft Firewall wouldn't be as good as another. When I applied for broadband, I went and bought Norton because I had built up confidence through their antivirus programs. I was just shocked that as soon as I got broadband I started gettting intrusions.

A question... I've got a connection of 576 Kbps. But yet, when I try to download certain things, the download rate is the same as it was when I had a dialup. In fact, my 'My Comments' page loads slower now than it did with a dial up modem. Can anybody explain this anomoly? Websites that used to take forever to load- CNN, MSNBC etc- they load immediately now. But FR and downloads actually seem to take longer. Is there any wisdom out there on this?

[BlessedBeGod]

Thank you all so much for your help and advice. You're terrific!

[BlessedBeGod]

I guess I'll keep ZA, but what really bothers me is if it crashes there is nothing between me and the hackers.

That's been my concern, too. Thank you for starting this thread!

[Cultural Jihad]

Well, the fact that you now have a fat pipe coming to your PC doesn't mean that the water pressure is always going to be a high. A server you are connected to might be struggling to pump out to thousands of people their own page requests at the same time, and if you are one of a thousand it will trickle in. In other words, there are still bottlenecks in the internet, just not on your end.

[Prodigal Son]

Yeah, but it seems odd that FR- which I have been using for a couple years now- should suddenly load slower right when I get a faster connection.

[Cultural Jihad]

When you say that the Your Comments page loads slower, are you looking at brief or full view? Be aware that when people post pictures on FreeRepublic they are only LINKING to pictures which reside elsewhere. Hence if someone wants for you to see a picture of, say, the planet Mars, then your browser itself has to go out and fetch the image from wherever it really resides. Also, there have been a recent series of internet virus attacks which degraded the network, I believe.

[Cultural Jihad]

I would get a hardware router, get the latest anti-virus updates, get your ZA to work again, and run some security audits such as "Shields Up!" at grc.com. Here's some popular bandwidth measuring sites, too, to see how fast your connection is:

http://us.mcafee.com/root/speedometer.asp
http://www.dslreports.com/stest

And a broadband tuning thread from FR:
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a391e095561f5.htm

[Prodigal Son]

I always look in brief. It's like opening presents that way. But to reiterate, I find downloads are not faster as well. So far (I've only had broadband a few days) if I download software or music (from MP3 for example) I'm only getting the same old 4 Kbps download speed I got with a dialup modem. I tried to download all the fixes and patches from Microsoft that I had avoided for the past year- it was a 23 megabyte download. I figured that should take less than a minute with my new speed. Instead, it took about an hour. I can't figure that out. Do you need special software to download quicker? BBC used to take a few seconds to load- now it's basically instantaneous. What's the deal?

[Cultural Jihad]

Well, maybe a professional can explain the apparent fast speed now of page requests but the apparent same slowness of large file transfers, but I suspect you are getting data as fast as the far end can send it to you.

[NYTexan]

Go to:

http://www.pcpitstop.com


It will be of help!

[ken in texas]

PPPOE stands for (I think) "Point to Point Protocol Over Ethernet". If your provider has that you probably installed some software that acts like a modem to your software. PPPOE sessions usually are set to time-out after a period of non-use... some versions of Linksy routers have had problems re-establishing the session after a timeout.

If you had to configure some software that needed to know your user id and password to establish a connection you might be using PPPOE. On the other hand, if all you had to do was set your network card to "obtain an IP address automatically", you're probably just running an ordinary leased address that gets renewed every now and then.

I didn't mean to scare you with the PPPOE stuff... but I have run into some problems with it. As a general rule, I heartily recommend the Linksys routers; but there are also others that will do the job. My church is also on SBC dsl, but I don't know if all cities with SBC service are handled the same way.

[tomkat]

linksys befsr11/hub/cable ...

Your computer at IP:

xx.xxx.xx.xx

Is being profiled. Please stand by. . .

Total elapsed testing time: 5.059 seconds

Your system has achieved a perfect "TruStealth" rating. Not a single packet — solicited or otherwise — was received from your system as a result of our security probing tests. Your system ignored and refused to reply to repeated Pings (ICMP Echo Requests). From the standpoint of the passing probes of any hacker, this machine does not exist on the Internet. Some questionable personal security systems expose their users by attempting to "counter-probe the prober", thus revealing themselves. But your system wisely remained silent in every way. Very nice.

[Agnes Heep]

Plus, all of these hardware routers impliment NAT which prevents attacks.

That's the beauty of it. When you use a firewall, your computer gets assigned (or you can assign it youself) a "private" IP address in the 192.168.0.0 range. Those IPs aren't reachable from the public internet. The "live" IP assigned by your ISP is held by the firewall. Malicious individuals can hit the firewall, but not the computers behind it.

I picked up a D-Link firewall today at Best Buys. The price was $49.99 with $30 in rebates.

[ManxyGal]

BTW, is there any way to disable auto-startup of CD's/DVD's under Windows XP?

Yep:
1. Right click on My Computer and choose Explore from the pop-up menu. This will open Windows Explorer.
2. Right click on the CD/DVD drive (specifically, the one on which you wish to disable auto-run), and choose Properties from the pop-up menu. This will open the properties window for that drive.
3. Go to the AutoPlay tab and change the settings in there to accomplish what you want. When you're done, click on OK to save the settings and close the properties window.

[supercat]

Go to the AutoPlay tab and change the settings in there to accomplish what you want. When you're done, click on OK to save the settings and close the properties window.

I've tried using that dialog, but the settings never "stick". Further, I don't see anything in there to disable auto-execution of autorun.inf or whatever it is that makes CD's auto-start.

[tophat9000]

Linksys.....still the best for the money .... I set up networks for people

No one should be on a always on Cable modem/DSL connection with out a hardware firewall.... no matter want brand or type of computer....including you Mac people!

[Khurkris]

I have been running Zone Alarm free edition for several years.Today 'BEST BUY' has a sale on Zone Alarm Pro 4.0 for $19.95. I just bought it, uninstalled my free Zone Alarm and installed the Pro 4.0 version. Runs like a top.

OS- WinXP Pro (I do not use the XP firewall)

Cable ISP (Road Runner)