Re: hardware and software firewall?

From: 14tonks (mail.2.14tonks_at_recursor.net)
Date: 01/02/05 

Date: Sun, 2 Jan 2005 07:01:41 -0500

It's generally a good idea to run both a hardware and a software firewall,
particularly if you have a LAN, and it shouldn't cause any problems if
everything is properly configured. The hardware firewall in the router will
hopefully intercept a lot of things before they can make it onto the LAN,
but anything that gets through that, or that originates from media used
inside the firewall, could bring down every computer on the LAN if you
aren't running individual software firewalls on each computer. Another
consideration is that many hardware firewalls control incoming, but not
outgoing, traffic, while most good software firewalls can be set to control
outgoing traffic as well. That prevents a lot of "phone home" pests from
completing their mission even if they make it onto one of your computers.
Just as using a couple of different antitrojan/antispyware products will
give you better protection than using one alone, using a hardware plus a
software firewall also gives you broader coverage against potential
problems, since there have to be identical chinks in both layers of armor
before damage can be done. 

-- 
Sheila
To reply to me, add the prefix real. to my address.
"Ed Chait" <edchait4remove@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:33pretF451cj7U1@individual.net...
> I recently upgraded my primary Win98SE machine to XP Home with SP2.  This
pc
> has wireless router with a hardware firewall.
>
> By default, the software firewall was turned on during the installation
and
> doesn't seem to be causing any major issues or conflicts outside of some
> problems I am having running peer-to-peer file sharing programs on the
other
> pc's on the net.
>
> Are there any benefits or detriments to running both the software and
> hardware firewalls?
>
> thanks,
>
> ed
>
>