Hardware Firewall best??

Wow ur wrong my stingray firewall passes all leak tests and it only cost me 114us with overnite shipping.

www.stingrayinc.com

 

Hi wolfeyes .
I was wondering about stingray . It seems it is the same thing as Alpha Shiels , only looks different . If that is the case , I would be a bit concerned as any site you request COULD embed something into your computer . It DOES keep hackers out from any place other than where you request but , seems you still need something . By the way . I heard so much bad stuff about the Nvidia firewall , I had to try it . I lOVE it ! Have not THOROUGHLY tested it yet but , I LOVE the interface and options . Pretty sweet . Thus far , does a great job .

 

oh im not dumb enough to run it by itself ive gone through za pro norton internet security 2006 and asked for reviews from every single one and now i use outpost pro theres a bug were if u miniomize it its memory ussgay goes dwn to 10k on my system. But the stingray really doesnt block bad sites and it does keep hackers out ive yet to find anyone to help me tests it but it passed all the leaktest with outpost uninstalled completely and if your wondering i play world of warcraft i get no laga dn system performance is great and yet it feels really safe i mean it. But this is coming from a guy whohasnt been infected in 15 months.

 

i meant to sya the stingray really does block bad sites and it does work srry lots of typos veyr sleppy bottom line it works and doesnt block any good programs at leats not yet. Oh and no one can even see my ip.

 

Hi wolf .
I want to congratulate you on your choice of firewall . Excellent protection . In my opinion , with Stingray AND Outpost Pro , your firewall needs have been exceeded .

 

Just another reason for a hardware firewall.. Seems like many vendors are putting in rootkits in their software and calling back to home with encrypted packets. If your software firewall has these kind of backdoors built in, they could be explioted by hackers. I think some news just came out on ZA. If you had this type of firewall backdoor, most would be none the wiser unless they are sniffing packets and happen to find it.

I have never spent a better $300 then on my Fortigate 60!!!!

 

How is the integrated Antivirus, any good?

 

Actiontec

 

I've been wondering about the stingray, will it allow port forwarding?

From what I gather, it uses ClamAV. ClamAV isn't the best, but they do tend to get sigs before anyone else, so it could make a real nice compliemnt to your desktop AV.

 

To the guy asking about the anti virus its the free version of avast i think but i dont use it cause i use nod 32 i just love it. And it allows port fowarding if u click the button to allow all traffic but u know i play wow and it was smart enough to figure out it was safe to let wow thorugh ive never neded to use the button excpt for a leak test were it wouldnt let the leak test go through.

 

Thanks wolfeyes_98 and Notok for your answer. I am also using NOD32 right now but I am planning to acquire a Stingray Firewall this year and I was wondering about their AV. So better stick with NOD then.

 

i say yes i hear many people saiying avast is ok but nod 32 does find more things and in my opinion nod 32 is much safer since it has taken the virus bulletein award for like 7 yrs.

 

on more thing dont get ur stingray straight form their website get it from
http://www.thinkgeek.com/ its much cheaper there u can get it with overnite shipping for as much as u pay for standard shipping at stingrays website. Also i had to cancel my order from the factory because they wouldnt ship my order n 3 weeks because the stingray is so good the factory is very backed up in the orders.

 

Wolf .
Any idea on what the differences are between Stingray and AlphaShield ? Just curious as they seem very much alike yet , I have never tried Stingray

 

It says the alpha disconnects ur pc form the internet when its not in use thats a feature which the stingray doesnt have but i dont think it creates its own algoriths like stingray does. but i really wouldnt be able to tell u as i dotn use alpha shield.

 

Question about the stingray: is there any special configuration to do to allow for using a bittorent client (such as µTorrent)??

 

no if it doesnt allow a program u just press the bypass button to let it through it uses no programs.

 

Just a thought on hardware firewalls. Okay, I was wrong about them not being able to pass leaktests. But it seems like free software firewalls can be just as secure, and I would argue that most software firewalls probably don't have backdoors (avoid Zone alarm though). In fact, software firewalls could be more secure than thigns like stingray b/c they are more configurable and thus don't need a bypass feature which as i understand leaves you wide open (even if for a small amount of time). With the money spent on the hardware firewall, couldn't you just upgrade your pc to make up for the resources lost to using a software firewall?

 

Meh ur right but layered protection is better and u feel much better its like sli 2 video cards are better than one same goes for firewalls. I mean the stingray is safer when paired up against hackers but it might not have the same effect with program control but its mostly intended for identity theft protection and stufff like that. As for the upgrade 114 dollars wont make my pc a speed demon i have 1 gig of ram and a amd 3500 and its pretty damn fast since i keep high maintnence with this rig.

 

Each is going to have their advantages, but ideally you should have both. The hardware firewall will be always on, which is great when you have to format, and will likely have more robust inbound protection. The sofware firewall will have outbound application control and may possibly filter traffic in ways a hardware firewall cannot. If you're willing to invest some time into configuring your software firewall to limit the ways each app may communicate, then you can achieve even greater levels of security.. not much point in hijacking your email client if it can only communicate with your specific email servers and in the normal way.. this would also defeat "phone home" tricks used by spammers and worms Having a hardware firewall in addition to your software firewall could also potentially save you some resources since your software firewall wouldn't have to deflect unsolicited inbound attempts, especially in the case of heavy activity such as flooding.

 

Looks like something like the StingRay isn't for me then...I mean, if I have to "leave everything wide open" to allow for bittorrent, it kinda defeats the purpose of trying to block things. I DL torrents up to 4GB in size, which can take upwards of 12 hours. Not sure this particular product makes sense for me if my only option is to either have everything closed off or wide open...assuming I'm understanding how it works, that is...

 

u dont have leave evrything open and when i used bit torrent it didnt have a problem. it let it through the first time u open bit torrent it might lag out bit torrent to analyze it and check to see what its doing but after that downloads are quick same goes for limewire actually my limewire went faster i was download gundam seed destiny at 60k minimum. It should be 90k always but i suspect outpost is overprotective even with custom rules.