No hardware firewalled routers?

lordsi86 · 21-08-2006, 15:08

are there routers with no internal hardware firewall or at least one that can b turned off. the linksys wrt54gs that i have now does let me disable the firewall.... and its a pain in the ****. my pc has a software firewall... (whats the difference/benefits out of curiosity)....

if anyone knows a router that can have its firewall disabled or doesnt have one i would be greatful it you could let me know.

cheers

Simon

Paul K · 21-08-2006, 15:12

Software firewalls rely heavily on your PC resources so can slow your PC down if the firewall gets busy. Also you have to do a lot of tweaking to get a software firewall to work exactly the way you want where as I find a hardware firewall to work brilliantly out of the box and you only have to tweak it for the odd application (normally P2P tools).

lordsi86 · 21-08-2006, 15:32

yeah oddly my p2p works abs fine. its online games that are a pain. i have tried port forwarding with the ports it says to use but it will only work to one machine but there are at least 2 on our network that are used to play online games simultaneously. which wont work. if the router has the ability to turn firewall on/off i can turn it off when i want to play online.

any suggestions?

si

Stuart · 21-08-2006, 15:33

Software firewalls have one major advantage over hardware firewalls. They make it easy to control just *which* applications have access to the network. This can be handy for detecting trojans/viruses, or just making sure that software doesn't "phone home" if you don't want it to.

Paul's done a good job of outlining the advantages of hardware firewalls..

BTW, If possible, I would suggest you leave your firewall ON. Especially if you use Windows. It's too easy for a windows machine to be hacked, even if it is fully patched.

lordsi86 · 21-08-2006, 15:48

my software firewall is on. it has no problems allowing games to communicate with the outside the problem is in my router. thats where the connections are blocked or something constantly kicking me out of games and things. i'm at my wits end with it. i dont know why its doing it even. i use an older model of the same router at home and it worked straight from the box without any need of port forwarding and the hardware firewall is still on.

Simon

grandmaster · 22-08-2006, 08:31

You could place your PC in the DMZ
This puts your pc on the other side of the firewall so to speak..

But as outlined above your PC would be EXPOSED to the "net"