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[The Shadow]

Or should I run some kind of software firewall too? I was just thinking, I have to allow certain ports an option of being open in order to use P2P programs like bittorrent, but doesn't this mean that someone could just hit one of the ports that is commonly used by those P2P programs and gain access to my PC?

 

[Cerebral Palsy]

I had nothing but trouble with various firewalls. Haven't used one for at least a year. Just a router. No problems here.

 

[BlackMage]

depends on how paranoid you are.

 

[SKluck]

It is enough. I have never used a SW firewall, I have never had any problems with being attacked or anything.

Most routers now have HW firewalls built in which is fine. What is the point of 2 firewalls? That is like having 2 pop up blockers. 1 will do all the work, the other will be redundant.

 

[mrklaw]

sw firewall is handy to stop stuff you've accidentally downloaded from connecting to the internet.

Hardware router firewalls are almost always just set up to block incoming stuff.

Effectively, PC based firewalls are application driven - stop Windows messenger connecting to the internet. Routers are IP driven - stop DoS attacks etc.

I'd keep both. not a big downer on your power. Or upgrade your motherboard to an Nforce3 with hardware firewall built in (assuming it has application level blocking)

 

[Che]

Or should I run some kind of software firewall too? I was just thinking, I have to allow certain ports an option of being open in order to use P2P programs like bittorrent, but doesn't this mean that someone could just hit one of the ports that is commonly used by those P2P programs and gain access to my PC?

I usually disable my hardware firewall cause it's hard to configure (and boring) and it creates various problems with P2P apps and I use Outpost firewall which works great with routers.

And yes I'm very paranoid. Plus on top of that I use Protowall (which is considered a kind of firewall) which blocks my favorite organizations (RIAA MPAA IFPI etc etc) from spying on me.

 

[The Shadow]

sw firewall is handy to stop stuff you've accidentally downloaded from connecting to the internet.

Hardware router firewalls are almost always just set up to block incoming stuff.

Effectively, PC based firewalls are application driven - stop Windows messenger connecting to the internet. Routers are IP driven - stop DoS attacks etc.

I'd keep both. not a big downer on your power. Or upgrade your motherboard to an Nforce3 with hardware firewall built in (assuming it has application level blocking)

That's what happened to me. For the longest time I thought my router was enough (and really, it was) but one day I was playing a game and it ran incredibly choppy. I checked Processes in Task Manager and noticed a few things that shouldn't have been there. Turns out I had a ton of spyware and a trojan virus.

I don't think I picked it up browsing the web. It was probably a spyware/virus "package" that I downloaded and installed. Norton anti-virus didn't pick it up at all. I did a full scan and it said my system is clean. Coincidentally, I had downloaded a free AV program just to test it out but hadn't installed it yet and I scanned with that. Sure enough it picked up the trojan.

Anyway, I'm not really sure how long I had the stuff on my system although I'd wager not long. All the spyware and stuff didn't seem to "activate" until I had restarted my system earlier that day. Because Norton is so useless, I probably would have discovered all that shit earlier with a sw firewall.

 

[SKluck]

If you keep your shit in check you don't need a SW firewall. Kind of the point, the only reason that stuff is sending out shit to begin with is because YOU installed it (albeit unknowingly).

If you are good about protecting yourself against that software a SW firewall is useless.

You CAN set up some (most these days I imagine) routers to block outgoing.

 

[Shompola]

biggest security risks are insider jobs anyway.