A little confused

[Hi Ho]

I have a cable modem. Do I need a software firewall? I have a D-Link DI-604 router and I always thought that it acts as a firewall. Am I correct? Should I download Zone Alarm? I have Windows XP Home. When I had McAffee I had the firewall disabled all the time because It would mess up my network. Would Zone Alarm do the same?

[Markoman01027]

Yes, the router does act like a firewall. So you will not need a software firewall.


Having a software firewall and a hardware firewall will cause problems. Stick with the hardware firewall, and not the software firewall.

[jca08]

i use a software firewall on all of my computers even though they are behind a hardware firewall for backup. i'm not sure if the hardware firewall would have caught these anyways or not, but my Norton Internet Security Firewall has supposedly blocked numerous attempted attacks (i realize a great deal of these were more than likely pings).
however, if you open up the right ports and IP ranges a software and hardware firewall can work together without interference. it depends on how secure you want/need to be.

josh

[Confused]

Software firewall will alert you to outbound traffic. That is the only advantage. Most peoplse have trouble with home networks and file/printer sharing if they run a software firewall in addition to the hardware firewall that a router provides.

My own personal experience was a disaster. I have WIN98 and XP PC's networked behind a router and do file and printer sharing. Tried the free version of ZA. Hosed the WIN98 PC so bad that I wound up formatting and reinstalling.

I do not think software firewalls are needed with routers and hardware firewalls. I run a antivirus on each PC and run Spybot at least weekly on each PC to clean out those that leave tracking cookies.
Chas

[azscary]

Hardware firewalls such as those in routers stop incoming traffic ONLY. They do not stop outbound traffic.

If your software firewall is stopping inbound traffic behind a router the traffic HAS to be coming from one of the other machines on the network OR some sort of trojan or worm has opened a port in the router firewall. Most routers can be manually configured to open specific ports for various purposes and one of those ports may be opened.

I run a router and firewall software because I want to know if anything is trying to access the internet without my knowledge. This is how I found that Real Player and Quick Time are constantly accessing the internet and slowing everything down. Disabling the auto updates did not stop all of the traffic out so I uninstalled them.

When the slammer worm and the blaster worm broke out, my router is the only thing that prevented them from hosing my system before I got the patches and updates installed.

[gunrunnerjohn]

I don't routinely run any software firewalls, and I've never gotten bit by that fact. You obviously have to be aware of what you're using and downloading, but with the router NAT firewall, virus scanning, and spyware scanners, I've kept the idiots at bay so far.

I have started using a firewall on any dial-up connection, I didn't for years...