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I've used both. ZA is free for personal use. Black Ice Defender (BID) is
inexpensive. They both have problems, but may be adequate for personal use.
BID has gone through some upgrades to provide proper support for Win2000.
Along the way, they've had some significant software problems. There have
been some MAJOR problems, for which they've taken a lot of heat. The worst
of these has been the firewall sporadically shutting down, leaving the
machine unprotected. They just released an upgrade to version 2.1x that on
first glance seems to have fixed the problems.
ZA is pretty slick (and free). However, in my case (as well as many
traders), it has a deadly problem. ZA provides monitoring at the
application level. Thus, outgoing requests must be permissioned. The easy
way to do this is to run your system and every time a new application tries
to access the Internet, a dialog box will pop up and you can grant eternal
permission for that app. The problem is that ZA is single-thread code and
whenever a dialog box pops up, ALL NETWORK ACTIVITY STOPS until it is
acknowledged. Getting RT quotes in a live stream over the net? That will
stop if a dialog box pops up. Using S&P Comstock with their Ethernet
interface. That'll grind to a halt as well.
I have corresponded with them about this problem (which I consider a major
flaw). They acknowledge the problem and state that the solution is to
permission all of your apps ahead of time. Great, unless you suddenly run
one you didn't remember. They say they have no plans to change this.
Here's the best solution. Use a hardware firewall. I just installed
SonicWALL SOHO and it's a dream. None of the problems of the software
firewalls. Also, this box is configurable to provide NAT and/or DHCP, as
well as stateful packet filtering, content filtering, address list
maintenance, etc. By providing these additional services, the box allows
DSL or cable modem sharing. It provides all of the services of the Linksys
cable/DSL router as well as being a great firewall. Street price is ~$400.
Includes free firmware upgrades forever.
Allan
At 11:16 AM 6/23/2000, Ron Augustine wrote:
>Anyone using either Black-Ice or ZoneAlarm? -- Any preferences? Pros or
>cons? Anything better?
>
>Thanks in advance for any comments --
>
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