The Splosh UK Forum

I have the firewall that came with my windows xp. I want a better one. What is a VERY good firewall i can download and use for free that dosen't slow down my computer? :(

I'm not sure about any free ones - but I use Norton.

I use Zone Alarm. It is free and is very good

There's also Kerio (which is part of the commercial version of AVG)

Go to www.nonags.com and look under "Security Tools - Freeware"

(NoNags is a great source for freeware)

Any firewall which isn't a seperate piece of hardware between your computer and your internet connection will slow the computer down a bit. Firewalls work by examining all the "packets" of data that come through the connection. There are thousands of these every second, and if it's running a firewall program, your computer's CPU has to spend time "thinking" about each one and deciding what do do with it based on the firewall rules.

It's a bit like having loads of electrical extras on your car, the power they use then isn't available at the wheels, so it's not as fast.

DM is correct - any extra software that is run (such as anti-virus or firewall) is going to affect performance.

I stopped using Norton as it has an element that regularly came to life and brought my PC grinding to a halt. Kerio and Zone Alarm are less intrusive.

Agreed. Especially Norton which seems to really eat processing power and also has annoying popups every so often.

I use Sygate Personal Firewall (free edition) which does run in the background but doesn't have any noticable effect on the overall performance of the Pc.

http://www.tucows.com/preview/213160