Any hardware firewall... that isnt cisco (due to their unfortunate breakin and liberation of their os)
my linksys firewall works excellent.

why is it that everyone starts talking about software when firewalls is mentioned? EW @ software firewalls.

because everybody see´s the great test over firewalls
ohhh, it´s sooo secure, no one can hack you, no datas can go out etc

and no one is talking bout routers
because....
they cost some cents

i just bought a router.....40€
wow, it´s sooooo expensive
but u will get not only a Hardware Firewall
no, u get a switch with in it !?!
that´s great
if u unplag router from i-net
u have a switch

and , other thing for broadcast user
u can go with 4 pc´s EASYLIE in i-net

but it costs
~40€

so, everybody is talking bout software firewall
beacause noone will spend money for security

Hi
for 'best' security you need a software firewall and a hardware one.
Hardware firewalls (ie routers) cannot protect you from a piece of software on your machine thats trying to talk from your pc.
(not all software ones do well at this either!)
A badly configured software firewall will leave you in a similar position.

Thats not to say you should install both, its personal choice.
No matter what firewall you use, you need to be aware of what it can do and how.
A hardware firewall is very low maintenance and will more or less give you top protection straight out of the box.
A software firewall can do more than a hardware one and has more to understand and configure correctly.

As has been previously pointed out, any home firewall may not prevent a determined and knowledgable hacker from getting in. To this end its good, amongst other tools, to have a tool to monitor the amount of data leaving/entering your pc.
I use DUMeter.
Its saved me a few times, in fact just 2 weeks ago was the last time.
I noticed immediately after booting that my pc downloaded at max speed for about 1.5mins. I checked the whole time if any app was active and found none.
I re-installed Windows and used KAV antivirus (cheers Mertsch). During a scan of the original windows folders, it found a backdoor trojan!

Find some nice tools that cure your curiosity about what is really happening.

The best firewall I have ever used is Smoothwall. This is FREE!, linux based but completely stripped down to the bare necessities for a firewall.
Now a lot of you are groaning "oh pants its linux" but its so damn easy to install. You dont need to know a thing about linux

All you need is a Pentium 133 or higher (yup, a free pc from the scrappy), 8MB ram with 2 network cards (or a supported USB modem and 1 network card) and a 1GB hard drive (not even that!) and CD drive.
Plug yer ADSL etc router in one input (LAN or USB) and yer LAN to the other network port.
Download the smoothwall ISO and blow it to a CD.
Boot the machine off the CD, answer a couple of questions about your hardware, network setup, ISP login stuff and some basic firewall info and boom your up and running in probably less than 15 minutes!

The Firewall is configured using a web interface and its so darned good and easy to use too. It has everything you ever wanted from a hardware firewall (this is like having a top notch hardware firewall).
Patching is just as easy as a normal router. Download, tell router to upload patch. job done.

Get yer Smoothwall here
http://www.smoothwall.org/

Cheers for the asking about this, you've reminded me to get Smoothwall going again here!

Using a router is a good start (I use the SOHOware Broadguard NBG800) but it does NOT prevent applications or virus/trojans from making a socket connection or prevent them from "phoning home". A router with a built-in hardware firewall ONLY prevents hackers from breaking into your system. It does nothing at all to stop or prevent outbound traffic, unless you block specific ports and protocols to ALL traffic. There is no application specific control using a router's hardware firewall, however.

I don't think there's a huge difference between any of the software firewall programs out there but what's important is to find one you can "teach" which applications you want to allow access to the Internet and (more importantly) which applications you do NOT want to allow access. I haven't tried them all but of the ones I have (NIS, ZAP, Kerio, TPF, XPF, etc.), they all do pretty much the same thing.

Another useful feature for firewall software to have is the ability to allow you to declare a range of IP addresses as a "trusted zone". That way, if you have a few PCs connected to a router (I have 4) or hub, you can simply handle all of them via a common zone declaration to allow them to talk to each other via NetBUI or whatever FAST protocol you want to use.

At the moment, I'm using ZAP (Zone Alarm Pro) and find it has the right feature set for my needs. One of the features I use frequenty is it's ability to immediately block ALL internet traffic (both inbound and outbound) with a simple right-click (menu) on the taskbar icon. It's also a very fast firewall with a reasonably small memory footprint. It even has an ad-blocking facility and is highly customizable. There's a free version too, although I don't know what it is missing from the Pro version.

In the end, it all boils down to what set of features you find useful, how fast (meaning transparent while in use) it is and how little ram it consumes. From that standpoint, NIS (Norton Internet Security) is probably the worst of the lot and I avoid using ALL Symantec/Norton products. They're slow, are memory hogs and are by far the worst bargain out there (considering what you're paying for). Of course, that's just my opinion.

Whatever you use, YOU are the one who has to live with your choice. Not me.

Later.

I don't even know why people need these firewalls.

I for me have never encoutered a serious attack and if someone scans my open port, so what?

Go ahead, steal my useless info.

The best personal firewall is being alert and not saving life dependent info in the root of your C drive.

(Soft-/Hardware) Firewalls are for corporates, not for simple family homes.


Now, my point of view: The only reason I use a Firewall is to test it, Outpost is new on the market and had strong claims, I just had to give them a chance.

yeah ....
the problem is not the attack itself ...
the problem are the users ...
latest analysis showed that ppl. save all their informations like password on harddisk in full form ... so any hacker got easy play ... if ya keep your online PIN for onlinebanking in mind not on HDD no one could steal it ...
is just the same as ppl. write their PIN on the EC VISA or whatsoever card ... what do you expect now ??

Get a hardware firewall if you can. For the software firewall, i'll suggest Mcafee's or zone alarm.

I'm not using any, because i am a dial-up user (firewall is still useful but not so). The firewall suggestion is from TechTV. .

the best firewall is 10cm of air between your RJ45 cable and your NIC

Zone Alarm