Firewall

No other single product class seems to cause as much angst to average users in their installation and day-to-day use as Firewalls. For such users Kerio Personal Firewall is my top recommendation as it seems to cause the fewest problems yet manages excellent protection as well.

Kerio dropped the product in late 2005 but thankfully Sunbelt Software, the makers of the excellent CounterSpy anti-spyware scanner, picked it up and will continue making it available under the name of Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall [1] . Note that the free and paid versions of Sunbelt Kerio are the same. If you don't buy the product some advanced features are automatically turned off after 30 days. The product will also nag you every time you start it. For some this is a small price to pay for a great free firewall. For others it's a real turn-off.

An alternative product that's also reasonably easy to use is the latest free version (V6) of the ZoneAlarm firewall [2] however I'm reluctant to give it my full recommendation. First, it can be a troublesome program on some PCs. Second, it's a very basic product compared to the commercial ZoneAlarm Pro version. The leak-test performance of the latest free version is in fact, quite poor while the Pro version is excellent.

If performance rather than ease-of-use is your criterion then the Comodo firewall [3] is the top contender. The firewall itself is very robust and it comes with a well designed intrusion detection system as well. Comodo also supports internet connection sharing, while the free versions of Kerio and ZoneAlarm do not. On the minus side the IDS is initially rather talkative and this can unnecessarily alarm inexperienced users. Additionally Comodo has been known to conflict with some other security products though more recent versions seem to be better in this respect. For the technically initiated this is an outstanding free product and an easy first choice. Note that Comodo requires Windows 2000 or XP SP2.

Also technically impressive is the Jetico Firewall [4]. It rates highest on the leak tests of all firewalls but personally I find it awkward to use. It may however, be just your cup of tea.

Another tricky product is NetVeda Safety.Net firewall [5] however its performance is quite outstanding and it offers application control and content filtering as well. This highly capable product deserves to be better known and experienced users should definitely put it on their short list.

[1] http://www.sunbelt-software.com/Kerio.cfm (7.3MB)
[2] http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/company/products/znalm/freeDownload.jsp (9.0MB)
[3] http://www.personalfirewall.comodo.com/ (8MB)
[4] http://www.jetico.com/index.htm#/jpfirewall.htm[ (2.7MB)
[5] http://www.netveda.com/consumer/safetynet.htm (6.3MB)