Questions Running a Software Firewall

Quote from 1flyfisher:

I have AVG anti-spyware on my pc but not the AV. I have Avast AV for anti virus stuff. I have Vista and a router, this pc is a laptop and is wireless.

Is the firewall enabled on your wireless router? Does Vista have its own firewall?
 
>1flyfisher

I used ZA firewall (free version) for a couple of years
on various computers with both 100Mpbs and 128k
connection speeds. Never had your problems. Pages
opened in 1 to 3 seconds.
But for other reasons I switched to COMODO and have
used it with no problems whatsoever for a year or so
now. I've found it to be as good as , if not better than, ZA.
You might want to give it a try.


http://www.comodo.com/index.html
 
Quote from 1flyfisher:

Is AVG AV a Firewall?
I have ZoneAlarm firewall...

Typically if it says AV it means anti-virus although some AV programs do some things that firewalls do. I would recommend just getting a router they are cheap and make sure it has NAT, you are good to go.
 
Upgrading the memory above 1Gb will not help much with your web page loading speeds relative to the firewall software. The folks at Dell were essentially correct.

If you want to improve your download speeds then I would urge you to use an external hardware firewall router with NAT enabled, and remove ZA from your system.

Best Regards,

- Greg B.


Quote from 1flyfisher:

Can anything be done to speed things up such as a faster internet connection?

I was also thinking of upgrading the memory on this pc. I only have 1gb and was thinking of getting it up to 2 or 4gb. I talked to Dell Tech support and the guy said that increasing the pc's memory won't speed up the web page loading speeds because of the firewall. He said it would speed up a programs(such as Excel/Word etc_) loading speed but not web page speed due to the firewall.
IS this correct?
Will adding more ram do nothing to speed things up?

Thanks in advance greg or anyone else.....
 
Yes. Its true that more ram is not the solution. The solution is probably to rebuild your OS and apps from a reformatted C drive. You might want to dump vista and install xp while you're at it (put vista back on when MS gets up to SP2 as the stories about SP1 are not encouraging).

This "my software firewall did bad things to me" reflects bad set up or internal software conflicts. (I see the tv program now "When good firewalls go bad" with a bunch of trailer trash white folks bemoaning the way their firewalls turned on them after years of care and abuse).

I use comodo on my machine but zonealarm on the kids machines (less chirpy although its got less security). One of the kids machines is an 800MHz PIII.

I can get full cable speed (17 Mbps) on any of those machines if the site at the other end is capable of supporting it.

So its a config or conflict issue not a basic problem with the software firewall. And NAT (network address translation) is not a firewall ... you need a firewall of some form not NAT.
 
Quote from kiwi_trader:

Yes. Its true that more ram is not the solution. The solution is probably to rebuild your OS and apps from a reformatted C drive. You might want to dump vista and install xp while you're at it (put vista back on when MS gets up to SP2 as the stories about SP1 are not encouraging).

This "my software firewall did bad things to me" reflects bad set up or internal software conflicts. (I see the tv program now "When good firewalls go bad" with a bunch of trailer trash white folks bemoaning the way their firewalls turned on them after years of care and abuse).

I use comodo on my machine but zonealarm on the kids machines (less chirpy although its got less security). One of the kids machines is an 800MHz PIII.

I can get full cable speed (17 Mbps) on any of those machines if the site at the other end is capable of supporting it.

So its a config or conflict issue not a basic problem with the software firewall. And NAT (network address translation) is not a firewall ... you need a firewall of some form not NAT.

I took off comodo ( to chirpy) and put zone alarm on....kiwi, do you recommend disabling NAT on the router?
 
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