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Sygate firewall is no longer available to download as of November 30th.  Symantec bought them.  They will still continue to support Sygate until further notice.

I'm going to be switching from dial-up (shortly) to broadband.....yay, I think.........I hope.  My dial up was down for almost 4 days.  I've had it!

What kind of firewall should I get?  I don't have one on my dial up.   H E L P.........Need suggestions.  I don't want Norton or McAffee.  Is Zone Alarm any good?  I've heard some negatives on Z.A., though, too.

cris

Hi Cris,

Congratulations on the broadband. I am sure that you will love it as long as the server is a good one. After being on broadband I would never go back to dial up again. I haven't heard of any freeware that is better than Zone Alarm except the Sygate so I guess now that puts Zone Alarm on top for freeware. I use the standard windows firewall and a router that I got for $25.00. So far it seems to be sufficient.

DUH------------how does one know if the server is a good one?  What do you have?  As far as I know there are only 2 available in my area.

Router?  What kind?  Are there different ones?  What's the difference?

Am I supposed to set-up the firewall before I connect up to broadband?  Will I lose anything on my computer when I switch from dial-up to broadband, ie. FAVORITES?

Thanks.

Grace and peace,
cris

The only way to know if you have a good server or not is through experience with them. How reliable they are? Are there a lot of down times, etc? I use one through the local TV cable company and have had very good service with them.


I have a router made by Motorola. A router is actually a device that allows more than one computer to be hooked up to one broadband connection at the same time. I nice side benefit to some of them is the ability to prevent others from accessing your computer  ......  a hardware block of sorts.

I would have the firewall set up and ready to go when the broadband is hooked up. The changes made on your computer will not cause you to loose anything in your computer such as favorites or other internet settings except the dialup settings.

cris, if you need a copy of sygate, let me know. I downloaded from sygate, Nov, 16 their newest firewall, 5.6. I can e-mail it to you I think. The file is 8.80 MB.

Thank you DW!  I'm not sure if I should even download it (from you) since Semantec bought them out and it's no longer available. Semantec is saying they will continue supporting it until further notice.  To me, that statement means Sygate will be "no more" eventually.  How long, is your guess as well as mine.  

That firewall came to mind when I thought about switching to broadband, so I went to check it out.  I posted what I found to "alert" anyone else using it.  

Grace and peace,
cris

 

OK...............we have two local cable TV companies in our area, too.  I chose one over the other because they're probably fairly equal.............I really don't know.  I'll find out though, won't I?  It's going to be several weeks before this gets connected.

The router...............they're supposed to have a firewall built into them.................did you know this?  It doesn't mean it's enough from what I've heard, though.  One still should have something like Z.A., too.

Now, are you saying the router keeps other people in the same household from accessing the computer I use, or are you talking about others outside the household?

Oh, your "new" computer is a little bit more powerful than mine.  I have the 80GB hard drive but not your ATA/100 and I have 2.0 GHz compared to your 2.40 GHz. I have 512 RAM memory to your 256 RAM.  Actually, I don't have the slightest idea of what this all means, with the exception that your computer is a little faster.  How much difference this is going to make with broadband, I don't know.  

The router prevents both, other computers in the household as well as those without from accessing your computer. Yes, you should have a software firewall in addition to the router for better protection. I just use the standard windows firewall.


The difference probably would not be noticeable unless you are doing a whole lot on your computer in addition to the internet all at the same time.

I use a lot of graphic intensive programs that take up a lot of memory at the same time I'm on the net so I noticed the difference when I upgraded.

Aww that's bad news that Symantec has bought out Sygate. I like my sygate rather than Norton. I don't even use Symantec any longer cause personally, I think their firewall isn't the top of the line. They try to incorporate too many things into one and we all know that when you try to do that the caliber of a product goes way down. Both of you are running a better computer than I have...lol. I have a 1.6 ghz processor, 512 shared DIMM RAM and a 40 GB hard drive. So i'm running a little slow. There are however some memory tweaks that you can do if you have 512 or better that will take out that blue taskbar and clear type and all that good jive. Nortel routers are pretty good, and of course Cisco routers are pretty good, but they cost a pretty penny. These little linksys routers are so hackable...and yes, I said hack. LOL. You pretty much have to hack them in order to customize them and safeguard them to a bit of an extent. ZoneAlarm does decent as far as firewalls are concerned. I still stick with my combination of Sygate and PeerGuardian. Since i'm on dial up I don't have much going right now causei'm at home. I'll put it this way, when it concerns a.v. software and firewalls...levels of protection is something that is essential. Now if you're running a Mac, you don't need as many levels of protection. So needless to say, layers of protection is a must for windows users. Just a few thoughts.

Joshua

Thank you, PR! :)

Grace and peace,
cris

Jemidon,

Sorry to be the bearer of bad new for ya.  Well, at least you know ahead of time what's going on and can plan for another firewall in the interim................that's GOOD news. ;)

Grace and peace,
cris