Talk:Firewall - Comparison

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Anyone want to help me do this? --LU 02:24, 29 June 2007 (EDT)

I'm running Sunbelt's Personal Firewall, so I'd be glad to do a preliminary writeup on it --iqchicken 12:24, 29 June 2007 (PST)

Good stuff! Have a look at the other comparisons to see how LU formed the tables. The feature list could be extended as other products are documented ... or do you have a good idea as to the key features that should be compared? --Ikester 13:02, 29 June 2007 (EDT)

Well I'm admittedly no firewall expert. I'm sure that LU could come up with many more comparison line items for the table than could I. Perhaps then I could just fill in the cells of the table corresponding to the Sunbelt Firewall? --iqchicken 10:49, 29 June 2007 (PST)

I could. But the question is should I? Would it be over-geeky to start creating rolls for Stateful packet inspection (TCP/UDP), loopback control ,Time sensitive rules, automatic whitelist rule etc? And if I start adding none-network features (basically HIP features) it would be even longer. That is why I think adding the results of leak tests from Matousec site is a good idea (it pretty much reflects HIPS performance). We don't do such testing ourselves, but we do display results from good testing sites, much like we display AV test results from AntiVirus_Comparison.--LU 05:49, 30 June 2007 (EDT)

Can we have this instead of matousec?firewallleaktester.comFind it less mercenary in its approach--Cudni 17:44, 30 June 2007 (EDT)

I would not. Unfortunately firewallleaktester.com is way way out of date (last test was March 2006!), not to mention it only tests a small range, while the other site tests free versions (including the 'frozen' ones) as well as none-free.--LU 07:22, 1 July 2007 (EDT)

I suppose it depends on who our audience is. I think staff members are capable of sorting through the advanced stuff on their own. That leaves the general user as the audience for this comparison, meaning that a more basic approach may be in order. Iqchicken 05:54, 30 June 2007 (EDT)

That makes sense to me. Too much detail tends to confuse the average user ... plus the detailed stuff could always be added as an compendium. --Ikester 13:30, 30 June 2007 (EDT)

Well okay does that mean the feature comparisons are frozen? --LU 14:31, 30 June 2007 (EDT) (none staff member/general user)

I haven't suggested that. Add/modify/delete what features should be important to the average user would be my vote. --Ikester 01:08, 1 July 2007 (EDT)

Are we going to include firewall's that are no longer in development? I think Outpost is one of those, but it is still in our roll-your-own-security-suite also. Iqchicken 17:14, 29 June 2007 (EDT)

Outpost is still developed actively, just the free version has been frozen...in ice age

--Cudni 17:44, 30 June 2007 (EDT)

I see no reason why adding firewalls that are not in development shouldn't be added. I do think that in the case of firewall comparisons, a seperate column should be done for each product, e.g Zone alarm free vs none-free versions, or different versions (Jetico 1 vs Jetico 2) since the differences might be substantial.--LU 05:54, 30 June 2007 (EDT)

Sure would be nice to be able to compare a subset of all products cataloged. I don't know of any way to make that happen but I'll check whether any MediaWiki extensions could allow that.--Ikester 13:30, 30 June 2007 (EDT)

 ?? Why would we want an extension for that? There are several extensions I would like, so I can do the some of the stuff done on wikipedia, but this isn't one of them. --LU 14:31, 30 June 2007 (EDT)

Because it's something I think would be good to have. Anyway what extensions would you like to have? Please feel free to drop off any suggestions at my talk page.--Ikester 01:10, 1 July 2007 (EDT)

I realize that each firewall has different labels for its "features". Seeing as I'm no expert I may add a comparison line item which is proprietary and throws off the balance of the comparison (and therefore should not be included). I just wanna let you know now... editing the heck out of my contributions isn't going to hurt my feelings. I'm a self-proclaimed novice just trying to do some of the "leg work". It will take some time to whittle the gazillions of possible comparison items down to a comprehensive list of basic features. --Iqchicken 19:41, 30 June 2007 (EDT)

If we were to wait for "experts", nothing would get done. Just call yourself an expert and run with it! The way I personally do for stuff like this is to inspect 3 or 4 representative samples on vmware, and see what they have in common and what they don't. That way you can see what is worth adding or not. if they all have the same feature probably not worth adding. Also terminology is a problem, right now, the feature names are way way too Sunbelt specific. --LU 07:42, 1 July 2007 (EDT)

If it is too sunbelt specific... than make a change... I'm only trying to put something on the page to work with...but apparently mediawiki can't handle changes as it blew up... lol... one of the reasons why i was never a fan of wiki's... Iqchicken 15:46, 1 July 2007 (EDT)

[edit] MediaWiki issue that is affecting this page

Please note that the last changes submitted by iqchicken blew up this page. Changes were:

| [[Image:ZoneAlarmFree.png | 100 px]]

| [[Image:ZoneAlarmPro.png | 100 px]]

Note however that similar changes made previously were not an issue:

| [[Image:Sunbelt_Kerio.png | 100 px]]

| [[Image:Sunbelt_Kerio.png | 100 px]]

Please leave as is for the moment as I get some help with this. --Ikester 14:37, 1 July 2007 (EDT)

... Iqchicken 15:40, 1 July 2007 (EDT)

Well I blew up another page also with the same problem. When you mix images in tables it might blow up sometimes. See [1] (click on next diff). --LU 06:37, 2 July 2007 (EDT)