I have a basic Netgear 614v2 firewall that's serving reliably, XP Pro SP2 firewall disabled, and am going on week two with Sygate Personal Firewall (free v.). I like the info and features even better than Zone Alarm (free v.), except that it's slowed web page loads noticeably.

The most interesting thing about Sygate is the number of outbound transmit alerts I get, mostly from the OS. They're shown as harmless svchost processes. The computer scans clean with Spybot and Ad-Aware. However, I still block them from sending not knowing for sure what they're doing.

So my question: Does the router block these same svchost-type processes, or should I keep Sygate running and accept the performance hit? Mark (midiwall) has written about this in the past and I'm pretty sure he's OK with a router alone, but thought I'd refresh the ol' knowledge base (mine) to see what the latest thinking is. TIA...

 

I think you should be good with just the router running. Mircosoft is always trying to do something, look for updates, gather cd info when running mediaplayer, etc etc.....a router will keep the ports closed to protection...thats why sometimes with file sharing programs and mirc style progs you'll have to open a couple ports in the router to get it running correctly....sometimes....

But it is nice to know what your computer is doing and what is sending what.....I havent run a software firewall since I got a hardware, and I havent had any problems, at least that I am aware of.