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Firewalls, What you need to know...

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Stoic Joker:
A firewall can be a really useful first line of defense in alerting you when something unusual is going on and when a program is trying to connect out to the internet unexpectedly.

I can't count the number of times that my firewall has alerted me about some newly installed program or driver making a web connection that I would have otherwise had no idea about -- and which prompted me to investigate further what was going on.  In some cases it has been extremely useful in diagnosing slow startups, program hangs, etc.

In addition, I just like to know what's going on on my pc and I like the fact that a software firewall tells me when programs are trying to connect to the web. And I like having a second layer of defense in my remote control tools, etc.-mouser (August 25, 2009, 11:07 AM)
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I usually use netstat /n for that - But field work tends to require you to use (work with only) what's there.

Having said all that -- firewalls can also introduce all kinds of tricky-to-diagnose gremlins that occur when they get it into their heads to block stuff silently and cause programs to stop working with no sign of why.
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Now this I see constantly in the field.

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