Lightweight Firewalls

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Jordan

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In ya'lls experience, what's the best software firewall you've come across that has the smallest memory footprint? I need to find something smaller (and free-er) than McAfee for an aging little laptop with only 256MB of RAM and a slow processor.
 
Ummm..Zone Alarm works pretty fine for me......I do have Zone alarm Pro,though.Its last version runs on my laptop pretty well,and it has 256 MB ram.
And I mean as in "doesn't hog my RAM and does what its intended to do"

You could also try Sunbelt-Kerio personal firewall or Agnitum Outpost Firewall,see which one suits you better. These aren't free IIRC,but still....

peace.
 
Zone Alarm worked perfectly fine on an old Laptop we had, 128MB Ram and 650mhz Processor. I'd recommend that 100%. 👍
 
Jordan, have a look at SmoothWall. Their product requires a low-spec PC (like a Pentium 100, and 128MB RAM with a 10GB disk, two network cards) and turns it into a firewall appliance. There is a free version and a commercial version. The commercial version can be specified with plugins that really lift it up towards the Cisco PIXs and Nokia/Checkpoints of this world.

Also, if you're not averse to spending some money, you can get the excellent Cisco PIX 501 for $375 from NewEgg (linky) .

This gives you a 10-user license and VPN support. It's the PIX-501-BUN-K9 package. You probably don't need to be hosting your own VPNs so see if you can find the PIX-501 package. More info from Cisco here.

The reason I suggest this in preference to installing a software firewall (even an appliance like SmoothWall) onto your laptop is twofold. Firstly, you need two network cards (public & private), which will need you to fit at least one PCMCIA network card, and which is likely to cause the laptop some problems.

Secondly - and more importantly - laptops are not designed for 100% 24x7 uptime, especially not ageing ones. If you buy an appliance like the PIX, it is designed to be up all the time. Yes, config can be scary to start with, but it's all quite logical, and for a £300 box, it offers a lot of flexibility. I've put several of them in, and they're excellent.

If you decide that a hardware firewall is the way to go, please please please don't get the Nokia IP40. It's awful.
 
Thanks for the input, guys. I haven't looked at ZA for a while now since I've been using McAfee on all my computers, but I'll probably end up giving that one a try. McAfee keeps trying to verify the subscription status, and on a laptop that is almost exclusively used on the road (and rarely has a good, reliable net conneciton), it quickly turns into a big pain.

Giles, as I said above, this laptop is almost always used on the road, so a hardware device isn't really an option. I've been using my Linksys router's firewall since we first got it and our cable modem. However, a good friend of mine who is a budding network engineer has said a lot of wonderful things about his PIX, and as my family's home network continues to grow I think it may be a good investment.
 
Only situations where Zone Alarm can be pain in the behind is when you forget to setup the alert showing,and when it detects an update,if the automatic updating is enabled.
 
Agh. I remember using McAffee firewall. Damn thing used to block port 80, of all ports!

+1 for ZoneAlarm, although I don't use it anymore (hardware firewall for the win 👍)
 
zone alarm,
for hardware solution try fortinet (intregrated antivirus and firewall hardware)
cisco IOS has remote vulnerability sometime.

if you have usable old pc, install openbsd, work very well as firewall. It can withstand DoS when installed on pentium 150MHz.

try CFOS too, great for improving internet speed or latency by preventing stall ack, have prioritizing feature, the firewall is simple but can be use to prevent DoS.
 
Jordan
Thanks for the input, guys. I haven't looked at ZA for a while now since I've been using McAfee on all my computers, but I'll probably end up giving that one a try. McAfee keeps trying to verify the subscription status, and on a laptop that is almost exclusively used on the road (and rarely has a good, reliable net conneciton), it quickly turns into a big pain.

Giles, as I said above, this laptop is almost always used on the road, so a hardware device isn't really an option. I've been using my Linksys router's firewall since we first got it and our cable modem. However, a good friend of mine who is a budding network engineer has said a lot of wonderful things about his PIX, and as my family's home network continues to grow I think it may be a good investment.
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Sorry Jordan, I misunderstood. For some reason I figured you had the laptop lying about, and were wanting to use it as a firewall appliance! :dunce: That and I'm so used to off-computer firewalls that I don't really think of them that much.

I did install ZoneAlarm on my Dad's computer. It's very reliable, and he has about 384MB memory for his Windows 2000 Pro machine. The only thing you need to watch out for is that it keeps trying to get you to install the Pro version, which is $$$ of course. That and when it upgrades itself, you need to be sure not to select the "reinstall" option. If you select "reinstall" it wipes all your rules.
 
Heh, it's alright, Giles! :) It's good to hear ZA is running so well with 384MB. On that note I just installed it and it does seem to be running very well with reasonable memory usage on the laptop. Thanks for all the input, everyone!
 

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