SG Broadband Community

Hey all, I am looking for a free small firewall to run with my norton...i dont want it to suck juice from my pc like many firewalls and vscans do... any suggestions would be appreciated and helpful... thanks

Everything running sucks a certain amount of juice, nothing you can do about it, and for the sake of security it's worth trading juice for peace of mind.

There's Outpost, ZoneAlarm, Sygate and Tiny that have been recommended as good free firewalls around here.

Try each one and decide for yourself which sucks less juice, and which works best for your needs. ZA is easy to set up and highly regarded net wide. Tiny is more flexible uses rule sets harder to setup for the new users.

Outpost and Sygate are well recommended as well, but I have little to no personal experience with either.

All seem to do the job if configured properly by the user. Each has it's own level of juice sucking.

Well that sucks. I think I'll try tiny because of the name.. thanks

Look here it might help you decide.

Wow, I like the site... Thanks again.... Alot of info makes moly holy... ..whatever that means..... thanks mnosteele52 and norm

http://www.agnitum.com/products/outpost/

this is the best around!! give it a try and you will
see what i mean............

Have to agree with you there Hayc.
We just switched WinRoute to my son's system, I loaded an old version of Outpost and updated it.
It would have to be the easiest firewall to use out of all of them now.
Still checking it out though. It's a while since I used it for any time.

Croc.

I trust that it is a good firewall; mnosteele and whomever else , can u verify that it is a good firewall? never heard of it before so not going to jump at the download....

I can't personally recommend it because I have never used it . I have used Zone Alarm (Pro & free) & Norton Internet Security I now have a router with a hardware firewall. Zone Alarm always worked well for me but if you bought one Norton's had alot of other security features I liked. I have never used Tiny Personal Firewall but it comes highly recommended by alot of people I would trust.

thanks for responding.. I downloaded ZA free.. and will wait to see how well it works.... I was always a believer in hardware over software but than almost everything has a prog in it one way or another soooo... Once ZA responds incorrectly I will try the Tiny since it always me to tweak it to my likings.

If you don't mind my squeezing a couple of comments in here;

ZA is a proven and popular personal firewall. If you elect to move to another for trial, there is a good bit of removal you will have to go through with ZA before installing another firewall. You can find directions for removal on the Zone Labs Site

ZA does use a large amount of resources compared to some of the others, and un-installing leaves a lot of remnant reg keys and so on that will conflict with other installations.

Should you choose a firewall like Tiny, I would recommend it's sibling Kerio personal firewall. Same Firewall, same developers, new company, and further developed. An Excellent (and low resource) personal software firewall, and it's free.

Hope this helps.

Originally posted by GuardianAngel
ZA does use a large amount of resources compared to some of the others, and un-installing leaves a lot of remnant reg keys and so on that will conflict with other installations.

I can concur on this. I switched from ZA to Tiny on one of my PCs, and it took a little doing. I have another that I tried to switch, and I ran into lock-up problems. I'm thinking that I haven't cleaned ZA out well enough -- and I didn't think about conflicting "crumbs" from the uninstall.

Tiny personal firewall just doesn't cut it. I've used ZoneAlarm (Free) and ZoneAlarm Pro. The Pro isn't worth it and it uses a good chunk of resources. I've found the Sygate Firewall to be the easiest to setup, and use. It also uses VERY little resources. but for a little better piece of mind get you some Hardware protection.
If your on a dialup don't worry about it.

Mongo, how does Tiny not cut it for you? I fully admit it is not as easy to set up as the others and takes more learning and messing with to get it working just right, but the customization you can get from it can't be beat by other software firewalls.

My suggestions:

Outpost - really good firewall while still being not too involved with setting up

Tiny - must know rulesets, but if you know them and want to spend a bit of time, this is my fav by far. Kerio is another way to go, but like I mentioned before in previous threads, I had a serious problem with Kerio where it would cause my computer to randomly reboot while surfing the net. Did it before a format and continued to do it afterwards. The solution was to uninstall it completely and go back to Tiny. Some others haven't had a problem at all with Kerio however, so go figure.

Originally posted by mnosteele52
Look here it might help you decide.

very nice link mnosteele52, thanks

Well, thats my point actually, I just believe that a firewall should be relatively easy to set up. Maybe Tiny does it for some but I for one (Computer Tech) don't like to spend anymore time than necessary in setting things up. Sygate simply installs and runs. You tell it what to let through and what not to as you go along. It has a site to test. I love geeking around with computers and such but to me a firewall should be one of the simpler programs and if you have a good hardware setup and Anti-virus program you are all set. So far Sygate has worked beautiful for me. Everyone has there own choice but I always recommend what I consider to be the easiest and best especially to someone who may not be the most computer literate. Give the Sygate a try sometime if you haven't. I've compared most of the free Firewalls and simply prefer Sygate.

Tiny & Sygate are the same one , Sygate & Tiny merged so the new firewall is called Sygate now.

Try Sygate and don't take any notice of the above post.
Have a read of this site. Some easy to follow setup guides there for Sygate. http://homepage.ntlworld.com/susan.todd3/index.htm

Originally posted by mnosteele52
Tiny & Sygate are the same one , Sygate & Tiny merged so the new firewall is called Sygate now.

More info... More info... link..... when? LOL

Croc.

Sorry Croc my mistake -just woke up , it's Kerio & Tiny that used to be the same - oops.

Croc.

Did someone say that Tiny Personal Firewall and Sygate have merged ? Last time I checked on the websites and on my computer they were quite different, but I guess I'm missing something. :-)

Originally posted by Mongo
Did someone say that Tiny Personal Firewall and Sygate have merged ? Last time I checked on the websites and on my computer they were quite different, but I guess I'm missing something. :-)

Read the whole thread, it was a mistake, admitted by the poster.
Apparently he was asleep at the wheel

Yep sure enough jeeze your right.

I have tried ZA..Norton internet security..(not free)..Sygate..Tiny..(when it was still Tiny)..and Outpost. In the opinion of someone who wants easy setup yet complete protection and doesnt want to be reminded every ten seconds he even has a firewall ...i recomend Outpost.

Originally posted by maximus8o8
I have tried ZA..Norton internet security..(not free)..Sygate..Tiny..(when it was still Tiny)..and Outpost. In the opinion of someone who wants easy setup yet complete protection and doesnt want to be reminded every ten seconds he even has a firewall ...i recomend Outpost.

Well said.

Why have the program there and set it to prompt you of all incomings and outgoings unless you suspect something is going on. All that does is cause unnecessary stress. Set it/forget it.

A proper firewall should be:
1... Trusted. (After all, you selected it.)
2... Capable of doing the job. (After all, you selected it.)

If either of these characteristics are lacking, the solution is to find another that will.

Sygate, Zonealarm, Outpost, Kerio (Tiny) will all do that. Never used Norton or the other paid for firewalls. Never seen the need.

Croc.