Hardware Firewall
 

I used to have a software firewall with Norton and really liked it. Then I got a Microsoft wireless router for my computers, and for the most part, it has been painless and fun. The router has a hardware firewall built in ( I had to remove my software firewalls so that the network would stay stable), which so far has not needed updating. Every so often I zip over to the Symantec site to test my security, which continues to report that my computer is a black hole on the internet. I'm curious if anyone else is using this "hardware firewall" and what they think of it. Anyone having problems with this setup?

I just wanted to point out that any 'hardware firewall' has an embedded operating system that's running a packet filtering engine. The main diffrence betenne these devices, and a firewall installed on your computer is that the 'hardware firewall' is running on a seperate device, and will probably fail shut.

Another thing about most personal firewalls for windows is that they often police outgoing traffic, which is quite nice for prevening malware (viruses, spyware, etc) from getting out.

If you need an extra hardware firewall, try and dig out an olde computer (386-ish, 12 megs, two network cards, floppy drive), and try Coyote linux, a firewall-on-a-floppy.

just sayin'

SmoothWall.org is a great place to trun a old pc into a hardware firewall.

Im not sure that classifies as a true hardware firewall--the firewall is still running from software which can be overwritten/changed. Part of the advantage of true imbedded OS hardware firewalls is that they cant be overwritten without flashing it, meaning its next to impossible to get through. Not to mention that when it fails, like Yotta said, it fails closed.

i'm running a lynksys router, and have had more success keeping out unwanted attention with it that norton, black ice, or zone alarm. i'm definitely still using black ice's application protection, monitoring modules and what's accessing the network from my pc has helped me eliminate spyware many a time.