Zone Alarm & Westell 327W

3 weeks ago, I switched to Verizon DSL with their Westell Versalink 327W. I always load the latest free Zone Alarm version, I have not gotten any intrusions or any inbound protection blocked. I have uninstalled and re-installed ZA. I have changed the Westell Security Level configuration from High to None just to see if I would get any ifintrusion blocks. ZA still didn't got any.

Prior to Verizon, I was using Earthlink DSL connecting with WinPoet. I would get quite a lot of intrusions that the ZA successfully blocked. I have been using ZA for over 2 years with Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition with no problems.

I am not sure whether ZA is no longer working or Verizon with Westell gateway is doing a great job protecting me. Since ZA uses 13 meg of memory, I'd like to stop using it if no longer need it.

Thanks for any comments.

Reply to
JoeD
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Reply to
JoeD

The 327W firewall wont allow any unsolicited incoming action to reach the PC software. Outgoing traffic would reach the software first, before it reached the 327W box, but either can block it. In the case of the 327W blocking things, you dont get any message (other than obscure log), it just doesnt work. You may not need ZoneAlarm with the 327W, in that the

327W has the firewall in it, which filters both incoming and outgoing (however outgoing seems a bit iffy to me).

I also started using the 327W with Verizon a few weeks ago. The little problem I'm having is that if I set its Firewall setting to Medium security for outgoing, it does allow the normal operations (web, email, news, ftp), but it blocks outgoing Ping (and Tracert is the same Ping), and also blocks the Windows NTP clock access (to set time). It blocks SSH also, but its Services menu has a SSH entry that allows SSH.

I assumed Ping was ICMP, but the ICMP service doesnt allow Ping to work. And I dont see any way to allow NTP, so I just use its Low firewall setting which allows all these actions. That "Low" is documented as "only known security holes are protected", but those few words have no actual meaning. I think the documentation and controls would be much more useful, but it does appear to work as a firewall. I'm curious how to actually make these things work too.

Reply to
Wayne Fulton

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