http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=388715


in reply to A perl personal firewall?

I wouldn't spend time trying to reinvent that wheel. Zone alarm (zonelabs.com) is free for personal use and does a great job at controlling application-by-application access to the 'net.

John

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Re^2: A perl personal firewall?
by Rhys (Pilgrim) on Sep 06, 2004 at 05:39 UTC
    True, but I've had my share of problems with ZoneAlarm as well. It has proven to be marginally compatible with several software packages (such as Cisco's VPN client), plus it takes a while to configure properly and tends to pop up a lot of annoying messages.

    Not only that, but it's likely that the kids have admin rights on the machine. ZoneAlarm will make it obvious where the block is. IPSec rules are quite a bit harder to trace down, if you don't already know all about them. :-)

    Of course, they may very well just switch to a different IM client, then you block the port, back and forth. At some point, you just have to go and physically kick 'em out.

    --J

[reply]

      It's been several years since I used it but Cisco's original VPN client was a stinker. It was marginally compatible with NT/Win2K the way I remember it.

      cheers

      tachyon

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Re^2: A perl personal firewall?
by DrHyde (Prior) on Sep 06, 2004 at 09:37 UTC
    Problem is, the user can trivially circumvent it. And you can bet that your kids will do that.

    Much better to force all their network traffic through a network node which *you* control, and install your filters on there.

[reply]

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