Hi...Finally able to get DSL this week & wondered about a few things. First i was wondering if it is all that bad to turn off computer at times? Like when i'm not home/stormy weather. That's what i do now with my dial-up. Puter is on most of the time but not connected to internet.

Second right now on dial-up i just have Norton Internet Security 2002 running with Norton Anti-Virus 2002. Everything is updated frequently. So i was wondering if i keep the DSL always on would NIS be enough? I was even thinking of turning on WindowsXP firewall as an addition. Is that overkill or what? :-)

I've asked this question to the person on the phone when i was signing up for DSL but thought i would really like to get a second, third, forth & so on opinions. Thanks for any help!!

get yourself a more dedicated firewall, outpost, zone alarm etc. set up a proxy too.

go to grc.com and run all the tests. make sure your pc is completey stealthed out.

it's ok to turn your computer off. You should only leave it on if it's downloading something or acting as a server. not sure how NIS is (intel gives a copy of it with the motherboard i bought, but it doesn't work with windows xp). I would make sure the firewall works well.

also depending on your OS, you'll need to take some more measures (both to tweak your computer for broadband since computers are usually tuned for dialup only....and also to protect OS flaws)

I have dsl and i use a router with a built in firewall (draytek 2200 usb) and a software firewall.You dont have to have your dsl connected all the time it can be turned off i just unplug my router when its not in use.With your Nis its only as good as its ruleset when it is first setup it only has a default ruleset which is very basic i have setup many of my own rules because the default rules where not that good.

Hi...thanks for the comments.

I think for now i'm keeping NIS but i've been trying out a few proxy programs to mask ip address. Found that i kinda like A4Proxy. Seems lite on resources & does the job okay. So think that maybe with that i'll fell alot comfortable about DSL.

Thanks again!!