[Woekele]

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Any decent firewall will hurt you while gaming.

I use Outpost, as I think it is the best out there. I still disable it for matches though.

As I said, mine doesn't. I especially doubt your statement when hardware firewalls are being used, or software firewall on a different box then the game-machine itself.

[rashly (old)]

Obviously decent hardware firewalls wont.

Software firewalls on the gaming box that do a good job of packet inspection, attack detection, etc will definitely make ping flutter, regardless of how good the network card is or how powerful the system.

[mitsubishi]

hmmm, you can try increasing the firewall's process priority. In windows, that can be done with the task manager (right click on the task bar -> task manager) and right click again on the process to change its priority. That will not be permanent.

I have no idea if that will help.

[]$[Homie]

A good hardware firewall shouldnt make any differance to lag or gameplay once the connection between client and server has been made.

Software firewalls 'can' slow down the pcs performance but todays moden CPUs (above 1Ghz) are more than fast enough to cope with the demands.

The hardware firewalls, even just a router using NAT will add lag but u r talking about less then 1m/s normally, the software firewalls will generally give u less fps ingame, but if it made 1fps i'd be surprised

Personally i sit behind a NAT router with full packet inspection, and norton internet security 2005 firewall on my pc and dont notice any difference from when i ran a modem and zonealarm pro

[FragginNewby (old)]

Firewalls are for wimps! SHOW SOME COURAGE - SURF THE WEB NAKED!!!!

OK, seriously, I never really liked additional software on my rig for a firewall - so I went and bought a router with a built-in firewall, even before I got my other two computers for the family. It just made more sense to me to do it that way. Anything I want to let in, I just map/open the ports I want to use and that's the end of it.

I'm actually considering setting up a ratty old computer (Pentium1 @90mhz) that I have as a router/firewall using linux, but I ain't that good with linux - yet. However, it's a challenge I am looking forward to getting into sometime in the next month or so.

[mitsubishi]

Well, If you don't run any servers and you trust your operating system to some extend, there's not a lot to be afraid of. I use a firewall but I wouldn't feel "naked" if I run linux with all the current security updates without a firewall and no servers running. There's always risk, even when running a firewall that drops everything theoretically, but, in many cases it's far less vital than security updates.

However, windows "shares" runs a server. windows remote desktop runs a server etc.. In addition, denial of service attacks (a.k.a. DoS, a.k.a. "floods") are far less effective when running a firewall that "drops" - not only "rejects" - unwanted packages, so be aware of the risks.

[HoboHumpinSlut (old)]

fs, my linux box is connected directly to the net. still, without iptables' NAT etc i indeed would feel naked. just too many services open which i use internally only (eg samba).
i did however run this very box naked for a while, but why should my kernel waste time to respond to every single hit on ports 135,137,139,445? dropping these does not lower cpu usage, but at least it reduces network usage.

[space-monkey (old)]

Quote

However, windows "shares" runs a server. windows remote desktop runs a server etc.. In addition, denial of service attacks (a.k.a. DoS, a.k.a. "floods") are far less effective when running a firewall that "drops" - not only "rejects" - unwanted packages, so be aware of the risks.

hehe reinstalled windows once to just sp1 and without a firewall installed in about ten minutes i had porn popups and windows wouldnt even update (took about 3 hours and after that it didnt work)

had to install windows 2000 then upgrade to xp.
i hate windows.

[HoboHumpinSlut (old)]

monk, just install without being online. get the SPs before reinstalling.

[space-monkey (old)]

[quote name='"HoboHumpinSlut"]monk' date=' just install without being online. get the SPs before reinstalling. [/quote']
yeah i didnt think of that at the time