Rookie Question About Firewalls

[Dgmcelvein]

Hi,

I purchased Norton Personal Firewall for my home computer.  Connecting
through a cable modem I find it is incredibly slow, even to the point of
bogging things down to an almost complete halt.  I have tried all the Norton
folk's suggestions with little improvement.

Yet, Zone Alarm seems to work beautifully on this machine.

Any ideas as to why one moves like a glacier and the other one doesn't?

Even better, since I'm stuck with the Norton system for a while is there a
way to make the blasted thing work?

Thanks for all assistance.

Dbm