ZoneAlarm and Norton Int. Security Question

[muthabored]

I've disabled the firewall that comes with XP Home. I've installed ZoneAlarm and use it as my firewall but recently read up on Norton's Internet Security. I see a lot of similarities with the two but there are some features that come with the Norton Internet Security that don't come with ZoneAlarm. What's the worst that could happen if I install Norton and have both firewalls running concurrently or is that even possible?

 

[bcastner]

You have no local network access, and no internet access.

There is no reason to have both, ever.

 

[muthabored]

So having both would prevent me access to my DSL (which would include Internet access)?

 

[dholbrook]

muthabored,

You do not want to try to run more than one firewall on a system at the same time, period! You would have no way to determine which is causing the problem and they will fight each other for the system control. Remember that firewall software works deep within the OS to block all unthorized access and egress. If you want more features that the free version of Zone ALarm, buy the bigger version.

HTH,

David

 

[bcastner]

You asked for a worst case scenario.

It can "work", but as dholbrook noted above, it is not what you want to do.

 

[muthabored]

Thanks a great deal to the both of you for this information.

 

[CTIEng2004]

2 Antiviruses are not better than one. Assuming you could even get the two to peacefully coexist would u even want evey friggen I/O to be double filtered? Can u say SLOW? I have to say one is a necessary evil these days, two is just plain unnecessary.

 

[dholbrook]

CTIEng2004,
The question being addressed here is not anti-virus, but the firewall (more like anti-unwanted visitors!).

I agree that two are not better than one (on a single system), you raise a good point, as both a firewall and antivirus software have to process all in/out traffic, which already slows it all down a lot, and adding additional filtering would only impact it even more, as each of these handle the traffic in a serial manner, not in parallel.

This is why it can be much better to have anti-virus at an external firewall for filtering in/out bound Internet traffic, anti-virus on the local system to filter traffic to the local machine only, and anti-virus on the mail server to filter mail before you get it. This takes a lot of load off the local system.

David