Talk:Personal firewall

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The "Features" section needs to be rewritten. --Crid 06:33, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Contents 1 "See also" and Windows XP 2 "external links" 3 ICMP 4 Inner workings 5 'Desensitize' 6 Criticisms 7 comparison

[edit] "See also" and Windows XP

The current version of See also mentions Windows XP and its firewall (incidentally, in greater detail than one usually expects to find in such a section). Is there really any reason to single out Windows XP's firewall in an article about personal firewalls, though? If it's meant to be a list, surely it should include links to other products as well, such as Zonealarm or the likes. Any kind of firewall list will be incomplete anyway. In fact, there already is a list of personal firewall vendors on the article, makes no sense at all to me to have the wiki-link to Windows XP in See also. Capi 04:36, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

I updated that section just now, so that at least it's more accurate. While I agree with you that singling out XP SP2's firewall (for better or worse) doesn't make a lot of sense, given the flow of the rest of the article, it's still useful information considering that XP SP2's firewall is actually part of the Windows operating system. Perhaps a better solution would be to include it in the "Problems and Weaknesses" section? Perhaps the "Features" section could be revised to include a mention of this? I'm just here to improve the quality of Windows-related information. :-) Warrens 20:48, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "external links"

Let them in alphabetic. -- Leon Sep.29 2006

[edit] ICMP

Could an expert please explain what users should do with warnings about ICMP echo requests? This is probably one of the most difficult situations facing normal users because most experts say this traffic can of course be blocked whereas others say it depends on the ISP. Firewall manuals usually provide no help either. Apparently some ISPs check whether customers are online and drop the connection if they don't get an echo reply. Also, it would be interesting and important to note in the article why for example IANA would want to scan computer connections in this way:

KERIO PERSONAL FIREWALL Incoming Connection Alert! Remote: 192.168.254.254 - ICMP [8] Echo Request Someone on address 192.168.254.254 wants to send ICMP Packet to your machine Details about application: TCPP kernel driver.

--Espoo 08:26, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Inner workings

This article completely omits the information on how a software firewall actually works. I believe it boots itself as a part of the protocol stack but I'd like to know more about it. --ZeroOne (talk | @) 08:25, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

There is additional information in the external links, for example in the Software Firewalls: Made of Straw article, which goes into a lot of detail on how firewalls work. 193.136.128.14 19:06, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 'Desensitize'

Clarify 'desensitize' as in "The high number of alerts generated by such applications can possibly desensitize users to alerts."

[edit] Criticisms

In criticisms section there should be mentioned, that firewalls very often (or always?) use kernel level drivers and bug in them may cause system crash without any warning. So firewall bugs can be very nasty problem! I have experienced it with zonealarm and kerio. 195.163.176.146 10:09, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] comparison

a comparison table more detailed than /wiki/Comparison_of_firewalls would be helpful here. i may start working on one when i get home.