Talk:Personal firewall

message: The "Features" section needs to be rewritten.
--Crid 06:33, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: "Features" section needs to be rewritten

message: The current version of See also mentions Windows XP and its firewall (incidentally, in greater detail than one usually expects to find in such a section). Is there really any reason to single out Windows XP's firewall in an article about personal firewalls, though? If it's meant to be a list, surely it should include links to other products as well, such as Zonealarm or the likes. Any kind of firewall list will be incomplete anyway. In fact, there already is a list of personal firewall vendors on the article, makes no sense at all to me to have the wiki-link to Windows XP in See also. Capi 04:36, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I updated that section just now, so that at least it's more accurate.  While I agree with you that singling out XP SP2's firewall (for better or worse) doesn't make a lot of sense, given the flow of the rest of the article, it's still useful information considering that XP SP2's firewall is actually part of the Windows operating system.  Perhaps a better solution would be to include it in the "Problems and Weaknesses" section?  Perhaps the "Features" section could be revised to include a mention of this? I'm just here to improve the quality of Windows-related information. :-)  Warrens 20:48, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "See also" and Windows XP 

message: Could an expert please explain what users should do with warnings about ICMP echo requests? This is probably one of the most difficult situations facing normal users because most experts say this traffic can of course be blocked whereas others say it depends on the ISP. Firewall manuals usually provide no help either. Apparently some ISPs check whether customers are online and drop the connection if they don't get an echo reply. Also, it would be interesting and important to note in the article why for example IANA would want to scan computer connections in this way:
KERIO PERSONAL FIREWALL Incoming Connection Alert! Remote: 192.168.254.254 - ICMP [8] Echo Request Someone on address 192.168.254.254 wants to send ICMP Packet to your machine Details about application: TCPP kernel driver.
--Espoo 08:26, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  ICMP 

message: This article completely omits the information on how a software firewall actually works. I believe it boots itself as a part of the protocol stack but I'd like to know more about it. --ZeroOne (talk | @) 08:25, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There is additional information in the external links, for example in the Software Firewalls: Made of Straw article, which goes into a lot of detail on how firewalls work. 193.136.128.14 19:06, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inner workings 

message: In criticisms section there should be mentioned, that firewalls very often (or always?) use kernel level drivers and bug in them may cause system crash without any warning. So firewall bugs can be very nasty problem! I have experienced it with zonealarm and kerio.
195.163.176.146 10:09, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Criticisms

message: I recently had to visit this page for a school project and stumbled upon the German version of this page: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Firewall. from the looks of it, it is a lot more detailed then the english site. it may be a good idea to get one of the translate projects to help us translate it  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Robo-kun (talk • contribs) 15:03, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Translation 

message: Donald Woeltje, a senior security consultant at the time (working for the client the Anheuser-Busch Corporation), developed the concept of the "personal firewall" while working on the BudNET architectural redesign project. The BudNET network is the data internetwork that connects Anheuser-Busch to all of its distributors worldwide. Mr. Woeltje was responsible for developing a proposed information security infrastructure design to be used to protect all BudNET computer systems. This was in 1997, which pre-dates all commercial personal firewall software designed for end user systems. It was his recommendation that A-B install firewall software on all Windows NT workstation and server systems (which is what comprised BudNET at that time). This was an idea well ahead of its time, as no such software specifically designed for this purpose had yet been developed and it would be years before such software was available. He contacted and brought in several of the enterprise class firewall vendors, at the time, for in person meetings and during those meetings, he pitched the idea of installing firewall software on every computer. All (but one) of the manufacturers laughed at the idea. Among these were companies that included Cisco, Checkpoint, Secure Computing, Milky Way Networks, Axent Technologies, GnatBox, Network-1, and a few others. The only company that said they could accommodate such a thing was Cyberguard, with their Cyberguard for NT product.
Of course, history has shown us that the concept of the "personal firewall" has become one of the defacto standards in protecting end user systems. Windows-based operating systems now come with it standard as a part of the OS and even Checkpoint, one of the manufacturers that laughed at the idea, sell their own version, known as Zonealarm.
Some might think that Mr. Woeltje would be wealthy by now from royalties on the use of the concept but sadly that is not the case. After talking to most of the major manufacturers about the concept, he never patented it. So, he has never received anything for his idea. And now he is unemployed and unable to find work in the information security industry.
173.8.106.225 (talk) 20:08, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  History