> I can only guess that with *everyone* (ok, almost everyone) running a > firewall these days that many more people are likely to have an > experience like mine.
I still don't quite grok how the security-bloatware has managed to convince people that they need these "personal firewalls". They degrade performance and are too dependent on the host OS for trapping conncetions. Case in point: ZoneAlarm for years managed to block PPTP connections as needed for most Austrian ADSL services even if not configured to do so and _turned_off_completely_. Though the ability to filter by application owning the connection is great it doesn't always work. The Windows Firewall silently blocks any connection attempts to the TightVNC service for example. (Opening the port by hand works.) A recent ZoneAlarm asks if it should allow the connection but shows the service starter process as originator. While technically... there goes fine-grained control. > The user should be told right there that a connection problem is not unusual > at all--in > fact is to be expected--if they haven't configured their firewall correctly. That's true for any networked software product, though. > I tried to figure out how to add the required "port exceptions" to my > firewall program. I couldn't. It was very frustrating. Configuring personal firewalls is a difficult job, not really easier than setting up real hardware ones, as the concepts are the same. If the ports that need to be open are not listed in the setup chapter they should be. Complete step-by-step instructions for the most popular personal firewalls are a bit much, though. Using a firewall without understanding what it does, how, and why is as dangerous as running none at all, and frustrating on top :) > discomfort over having to use the Windows built-in firewall, which I've been > told is not a > good long-term firewall solution. A good long-term solution would be reading up on the concept of firewalls and then perhaps get a router that has a nice one built in. C. _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
