How good protection does the built in
firewall in Microsoft XP Pro give a
24/7 connected DSL user like myself ?

It's built into the kernel like the Linux
2.4 iptables/netfilter ?

XP built in firewall is a joke.Fortunately you will not be connected for great lenths of time.Most hackers will look for a constant connection(dsl,cable).Zone alarm is a free ,great program for firewall protection.www.zonelabs.com.

Xp's built in firewall is far from a joke. It works rather well to be honest. The down side to it is it is not very user friendly but it does work well. Yes, ZA is free and allows a lot more options. If you want more protection get a single port hub with a built in firewall. Just remember no type of firewall is 100% fool proof but most real hackers have better things to do than break into a personal computer and if you have data on your HDD that is sensitive, remove it. Also make sure you invest in a good AV program and keep the DAT files up to date.

Laters,

KTTD

I own a netgear fr314 and I think it pretty close to fool proof. I can tighten the screws down so no one gets anywhere.

Hardware can't be hacked like software and software firewalls may route data through to microsoft from an agreement made with the software source licensing contract.

I guess the real test of a firewall is to stop XP from spilling the beans back to microsoft. You'll know when its done right when the requester for activation pops up every 3 months. Then put realnetworks on that list too.

If you think hardware can not be hacked into you need to get out from under that rock. If a computer is connected to the internet in anyway it can be hacked into. The only safe system is a system that is not connected to anything else. You can have a firewall that cost 20K and these types of firewalls are hardware based and they can still be breached. The bottom line is that the avg. user has nothing to worry about for the most part. I could go on and on but I won't. I'll just say this, I had my eyes opened in a big way one night and being on a cable modem I don't worry about being hacked. You want into my system, feel free. There is not much to gain from it.

Laters,

KTTD

If all my incoming ports are pointing to nonexistant computer, how am I going to get hacked?

I'm going to know about any attempts far enough in advance and can take action to move ports to that address (nasty). Attempts at trying to bust the password will fail because the port isn't open. DOS attacks are ignored. I can jump to a new IP and with the hackers broad IP searches, my ISP would come down on the attackers quickly, stop traffic, and find the sources.

What, Me worry?

Ray, KTTD is correct. No machine is 100 % safe if it is online.
Pentagon which use the most sophisticated firewall, i believe, has got hacked too. even Microsoft has got hacked too. And of course Steve Gibson, a security expert has got hacked too (www.grc.com). No one is safe from the real prof. hacker.

If u want a free but reliable firewall, I say Sygate is the best of them all! zonealarm has a few leaks here and there...

i think Balck ice defender is the best!!!
anyone know if this is a really good one or rubbish