tweaking out my dsl and finding a good firewall

[FRIDGE]

of so this morning i had to reinstall my whole dsl setup because it got disconnected and thats the only way i know to reconnect! but i had to delete my firewall zone alarm... does anybody know of a good firewall that wont affect my internet uses like zone alarm when i turned aol on it would restart my comp. also one of the tech guys of my several calls to verizon this morning said that my line form my wall to the modem shouldn't be more than 14 feet and i should move my router closer to the phone and get a longer ethernet cable is it true that it will make my dsl faster or is that some BS he tried because he didnt know what was wrong wiht my comp?

 

[Skyline Racer]

My Router is about 12 feet from a phone and I get 285/ kb/ sec. Downloads. Zone alarm is good product, But it can cause problems possibly how you are having them. I Don't know of another firewall, But i've heard of something called FireFox. I dont know what that is but I think It might be a Firewall, Dont quote me on it though. Good luck on fixing your system.

 

[FRIDGE]

i have the firefox browser and i love it. i barely use aol.. you should check it out its free.mozilla firefox

i get like 185 kb when I'm DL'in stuff

 

[Skyline Racer]

Well, My service claims that we are 7x faster than DSL. So I guess, Something makes me have a max of 331 kb we downloading. It has its kinks alright though, Alot of pop ups but COX Communications has free stuff on their site.

 

[bigfreak]

As long as you keep the firmware updated on the NAT router and you don't DMZ your PC or forward silly ports such as Windows File Sharing ports to your PC, the risk of outside attack is pretty low. They are more likely these days to use a torjan that you downloaded off a porn site to get "back door" access. This is why using firefox for your browser is good. It doesn't let in all the bugs IE does. All you need is one piece of spyware to hit your IE registry settings and IE will install every ActiveX control it comes accross.

I worry more about spyware, malware and trojans than I do about network attacks these days. Hardware routers rock.

Skyline Racer, if you have a lot of popups... chances are you've got some bugs on there. My boss's home computer just had the same problem the other day. I went over and it was loaded with crap. (they're using IE)

EDIT: Installed Fire Fox just now. I felt like the drunk pegnant teenager preaching to the choir.

 

[HumboldtBlazer]

Fire Fox crashes a lot and you will not be able to end the task (Win XP Pro SP2) and this will cause a hard re-boot. This especially happens with online .pdf's. Firefox is good but in no way stable. I use FF as my primary browser. If you have DSL get a good $70 router with firewall built in.

 

[lykan]

the shorter your phone line the better, some will say otherwise but my experience, real life experience says shorter is better, also a cheesey cord will cause you isssues as well.

As for ethernet, you should be absolutely fine going aslong as you want in your house. I once ran cat 5 through a buried peice of conduit to share my high soeed with my neighbor heheh..they say cat5(ethernet) does 300ft

 

[Skyline Racer]

BigFreak- Yeah I probably do. I run IE As well. Thanks

 

[MyJeep]

If you are using DSL, keep the phone line as short as possible. And the network cable should not be longer than 100 feet.

If you are in search of a good firewall program, I suggest Sygate. You can get free version from download.com. The free version is good enough unless you are running mutiple network. If you need more tweaking, get the Sygate Pro.

I prefer Sygate over Zone Alarm mainly because Sygate tends to use less memory. Both of them does the same job.

 

[bigfreak]

As for ethernet, you should be absolutely fine going aslong as you want in your house. I once ran cat 5 through a buried peice of conduit to share my high soeed with my neighbor heheh..they say cat5(ethernet) does 300ft

Lykan is right, the "theoretical" for CAT5 is 100 meters or about 300ft. I say theoretical because there is some signal loss and the practical limit is more like 2/3rds that or roughly 200 feet. Mind you I've never made 200ft cat5 pigtail but I feel confident it would work if I had to do it. :smoke:

HumboldtBlazer, thanks for the heads up on the firefox stability thing. I'm putting it through the paces before I deploy it. (if I deploy it)

EDIT: Kind of a weird side effect, RCNT seems much faster with firefox. :shrug:

 

[FRIDGE]

thats maily why i use firefox too just to surf rcnt and the airbrush forum i co-in training-admin @ it seems soo much faster, I've never had it crash in the week I've used it!

 

[FSTFBDY]

Cablemodem with a wireless setup here. I use FIREFOX on 2 laptops.
1. with XP/SP2 with no problems.
2. WIn2000 with No problems.

on the Xp machine I just use the built in firewall
on the Win2000 manchine I use Norton internet Security

Not to much crap on either PC at all.

I also use Ad-aware, Hijack This, SpyBot Search n Destroy and House Call online virus scanner now and then.