Quote:
Originally Posted by Blossom
I agree Windows 10 has a nice firewall. I tried a few add ons for it. Tiny Firewall which I really like but the cons are it's not ready for real use. It kept blocking system processes even after it was allowed. It stalled Windows Updates to where I had to stop the auto update service then delete everything in the software installation folder to fix Windows updates. I also think it didn't handle Windows Firewall well. The next was Windows Firewall Control nice but not worth $10 for the extras. The winner was Glasswire. It's uses Windows Firewall but gives you so much more control and has a nice interface. It's also is a WiFi/Bandwidth monitor. I really like it.
The none Windows Firewall I tried again was Zone Alarm. I hated it. I'm sticking with Glasswire.
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I ran Zone Alarm years back. It got mightily confused when for a while I had two ISPs and two network connections. My first broadband was DSL, because cable modem service wasn't available where I was at the time. When cable modem service did become available, I installed it, but kept the DSL line as a high speed backup.
Having two network connections was beyond Zone Alarm's abilities. It reached a point where it appeared to think my two ISPs email servers were trying to talk to each other through my machine and blocked both. Sygate Personal Firewall, mentioned earlier, had no such issues and I switched.
I looked at a couple of addons that are designed to bring easier configuration and more control to Windows Firewall and passed. The big possible win is better
outbound control, and blocking stuff on your machine that wants to get to the outside world. That's not a concern here. I know what communicates from my machine and have no reason to block it.
For Wifi bandwidth monitor, I use Networx from Softperfect. I use 5.5.5 64 bit, which is the last freeware version. It keeps stats by day, week, month, and year, by monitored interface, and can display which applications are connecting to the outside world and the volume of data they send/receive. See
https://www.softperfect.com/products/networx/ for details on the current commercial version. It's available for Linux and OS/X, too.
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Dennis