How they work and some recommendations.

Here is an article from WorldStart that explains how firewalls work.

Here is another article from WorldStart that talks about the problems with multiple firewalls.

Here is an article from WXPNews that discusses some firewalls and makes some recommendations.

And below is an excerpt from the WXPNews newsletter that expands on the above article.

Followup: Firewall Fight to the Finish

Last week we did a review of several popular personal firewall products and recommended Kerio. We got some mail from readers who feel our report was biased because Sunbelt Software (the owner of WXPnews) also owns Kerio. We freely admit the relationship (and made sure to state that Kerio was owned by Sunbelt in the review itself), but we pointed out strengths and weaknesses in all the products.

For an unbiased opinion, though, check out Neil Rubenking's firewall review in the October 2005 issue of PC Magazine. He reviewed the same products and came to the same conclusion: Kerio is the best choice for Windows 2000 and XP. We should have mentioned that Kerio PF 4.0 doesn't support Windows 9x and Me. We also should have mentioned that, like the others, Kerio has a free version as well as the paid one. Some of our readers mistakenly stated that Kerio is not free and shouldn't have been compared to the free firewalls.

You can also read the review at http://www.wxpnews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=060131ED-Review, which gave Kerio a 9 out of 10 user rating. Kerio 4.0 also got 5 stars from popular U. K. magazine Webuser at http://www.wxpnews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=060131ED-Review2. It has also been recommended by Jason Parker at CNET. We could go on, but you get the idea: we aren't the only ones who believe Kerio is a great choice if you need a personal firewall.

A lot of you had questions pertaining to whether you need a third party firewall if you have a cable or DSL modem/router with built in firewall protection. The first thing you want to check is whether your modem/router has full fledged firewall protection, or is advertising Network Address Translation (NAT) as "firewall" protection. NAT does offer some protection because it hides the internal IP addresses of your computers, but it's not the same as a real firewall. If the device is a firewall, check whether it protects both inbound and outbound messages or only inbound ones. And remember that your DSL/cable device acts as a perimeter firewall. That means it protects you only from computers on the Internet, not from others on your internal network. If you need protection from machines on the local network, you might want to install personal firewall software.

In fact, lots of you said that you're using both perimeter firewalls and personal firewalls (many of you are using the Windows firewall for the latter). There are many different solutions in use among our readers and it seems a lot of folks have passionate opinions (good and bad) about various firewalls. We heard from some who swear by a particular product and others who called the same product a "complete dog." It goes to show one thing: different folks like different things. Whatever your own preferences, we hope that if you're looking for a good firewall, you'll give Kerio a try.