Re: I am sick of windows firewall

V S Rawat wrote:
Duane Arnold wrote:



It was not known to me the windows firewall concentrates only on
incoming traffic, and not on outgoing traffic.

All FW's if you want to call a personal FW a FW concentrates on stopping unsolicited inbound traffic. They do NOT concentrate on stopping outbound traffic. If outbound traffic needs to be stopped by a user of a FW solution, then packet filtering rules are going to be set to stop the outbound traffic, which was determined by reviewing FW logs and making a determination that the traffic was dubious in some nature and stopping the traffic.


That does clear a lot of fog about the peculiar presence and
absence of program names in windows firewall.

OK.


However, it is certainly not correct that when I install a
program that means I have given a blanket permission to connect
to net. There are several programs which have made a habit of
connecting to net.

If it's an application that needs access to the Internet, then I think that you should know that it needs access to the Internet. And no program is doing nothing out of habit. It's doing what it has been
programmed to do whether or not it's designed to connect to the Internet or not connect to the Internet.


Most common excuse is to check their updates, or to download
some driver or extensions.

They are doing what they are supposed to do and you know that.


I don't want them to do it without my permission, at least not
without my knowledge. And all their options are quite hidden
somewhere is millions of options/ preferences/ settings, that it
will make one go mad if he tries to silent every program right
at the time of installing xp.

That's why on the one PFW solution on the one machine a laptop I use while on the road that uses a PFW, I turned the crap off. I get better things to do. And besides I know what's running on the machine and who is doing what. I also know how to review things and make a determination if traffic coming to or leaving the machine is dubious in nature. Other than that, I don't use a PFW on any of my machines and when the laptop is at home connected to the FW appliance, it's turned off.


Then, several programs just don't have any option to make them
totally silent. Several program will not give any option to
manually check for updates. It is necessary to select the
biggest duration, like monthly in wmp.

OK


Then, windows own programs like automatic update, connect at
their wish, or nag you ad nauseum. windows just need an excuse
to go to net. If you try to install a hardware, first option you
get is "find driver on net", even if the most likely option is
that when you have the device, you are likely to have its driver.

The programs are doing their jobs. What do you want? And besides you can disable that option on the O/S and you can take control of that yourself if it's a concern to you.


When I use za, then I, at least, come to know that a program is
trying to make a connection. At that time, I can stop it for
then, or for ever by refusing to za. or go to that program and
change the settings in the program itself, if possible.

It's not a FW's job to do that. It's job is to stop unsolicited inbound traffic from reaching the machine. Or if you have one that you can set outbound packet filtering rules is to stop outbound traffic when need be and logging traffic is the FW's job.

However, PFW(s) running on the Windows platform have this other junk in them trying to protect you from *you* that it cannot do.



Thus, windows firewall is a cripple that it does not control,
nor report outbound traffic.

The Windows FW or packet filter is doing its job, which is to stop unsolicited inbound packets from reaching the machine. The packet filter's job is not to be controlling what's running on the machine but has that feature in it like the other solutions have that worthless feature in it to keep pace with them.

However, the Windows FW will start first before any another application will start on the machine before the TCP/IP is made available to the Internet to protect the machine. Third party solutions such as ZA cannot protect the machine on the boot and logon process like the XP FW can do it.


Those who are using windows firewall have made a wrong choice.

You must be out of your mind and you do NOT know what you're talking about.

1. Now, if there is some other firewall that controls/ reports
outbound traffic, please do suggest it to me. Till then, goodbye
to windows firewall. za stays.

Go get a NAT packet filter FW router that meets the specs in the link and is ICSA certified. They don't cost that much. You can get a good one.

http://www.firewall-software.com/firewall_faqs/what_does_firewall_do.html


2. Is there any method of silensing za from reporting internal
traffic on the pc. Like, it should not report when data is
getting transferred within my disk from one program to another
program which are no way related to net.

It should not be doing it in the first palace it's not a FW feature.


It should report only
those traffics which are getting/sending data from net. Is there
any other firewall with this feature?


IPsec that's on the XP O/S too can be used to supplement the XP FW if you need to stop outbound packets. And it can do it by port, protocol, or IP.

However, it's use along with the XP FW is based on you know what's running on the machine in the first place.

I use IPsec and BlackIce on my XP Laptop machine while on the road. :)

http://www.petri.co.il/block_ping_traffic_with_ipsec.htm
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/813878

I use the AnalogX IPsec rules to supplement BlackIce on the laptop.

http://www.analogx.com/contents/articles/ipsec.htm

If I needed to stop outbound traffic behind BlackIce by setting packet filtering rules for outbound, I would use IPsec. I have not needed to do it.

Duane :)

.

Relevant Pages

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