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dem Firewalls

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GoGeTa006:

--- Quote from: halfelite on May 28, 2012, 06:03:03 AM ---Sounds like small nat table, torrents can fill up a nat table not allowing any more connections to go through same with games on steam. What router do you have.

--- End quote ---

Belkin

I disabled the router's firewall and everything is faster right now, but now I dont feel protected :P

vuzedome:
Wait how did you disable it?
As far as I know you can only DMZ yourself out.

datora:
.
Wow.  Naked Internet connection.  I haven't done that in a few years.  You're router is now behaving like a switch ... meaning, pretty much everyone can see you now as a peer.

The last time I did that was about 2008 ... the software firewall on my computer was reporting about 3,000 probes per hour.  I haven't looked it up for a while, but it used to be that a naked connection to a Windows machine was generally compromised within about 15-20 minutes, on average.

That was back when Win2K was just turning over to WinXP circa SP1 & SP2 days.  Efforts to compromise machines have probably increased since then, but (assuming  you still have your Windows firewall up) it may actually be harder for generic bot probes to get through today.

Assuming you're on a patched Win7 system, you're probably a little bit safer than I was when I tried it last ... but, you are definitely running some ,,,interesting risks there.  You probably want to consider different options.  In the near future.

Bob2004:
Personally, I'd recommend disabling the Windows firewall and using a different one. Either Avast, since you already have it (though I didn't know Avast even had a firewall), or something like Comodo (which is what I use).

The Windows firewall, when configured properly, is every bit as impregnable as any third-party firewall you could install. The problem is, configuring it properly is pretty difficult. Not only that, but while it is great at preventing people connecting to your PC from outside, it is completely useless for preventing unwanted connections from your computer to the outside world, which is just as important.

If you unknowingly install a trojan/spyware/etc onto your PC by accident, then it can automatically add itself to the Windows firewall's list of exceptions and thus allow some random computer out on the internet to be able to connect to it. Using a third-party firewall, it wouldn't be able to do this, and when it tried to accept a remote connection from another computer, the firewall would pop up a warning to let you know.

If you don't believe me when I say that, go and look at the Windows Firewall exceptions list. There will most likely be a whole bunch of programs listed which you didn't add yourself.

Third-party firewalls also have a bunch of other useful features, and are usually more configurable. If you want to block a specific program, or only allow incoming connections from a specific IP address, etc, you can't easily do that with the Windows Firewall, but it is possible with most third-party firewalls.

Either way, whichever you use, you should definitely make sure to turn the router's NAT firewall back on ASAP. It's incredibly useful to have, and there should be no cost to using it (although it does sound like it's not enjoying the hammering it's getting from bittorrent). That and one local firewall on your PC is all you need, but it's also the minimum you should have.

nstgc:
I'm behind my router's (meager) firewall, as well as ESET's firewall. I do have some problems connecting to EA's servers, but only automatically. If I log in manually (in game) it works as expected.

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