Take 2 Firewalls into the shower?

[Paradroid]

Another noob question here peeps:

I've just recently acquired a router with a hardware Firewall, but I've also got Norton Firewall running on WinXP too.

Should I be disabling on of these Firewalls, or tweaking settings?

I don't mind if the hardware firewall is doing all the work and freeing-up Norton (less Windows resources?), but I don't know if this actually happens.

Any ideas?

 

[Jupitus]

I run both without issues.... belt and braces approach maybe but better safe than sorry....

 

[SheepCow]

I've got a hardware firewall completely blocking local Windows file sharing from coming in or out of my local network, and a software firewall as well ...

 

[MrK-]

Firewalls are good. The more, the better. Especially if they are different.

 

[Cask]

Turn off the software firewall and run the Shields Up test. If it does alright on the port scan tests then don't see why you should keep running the norton firewall. I can see why people say 2 firewalls are better than one but when you do actually need to run a server and free up some ports it's a big enough pain in the ass just doing it once let alone twice.

 

[Dr_Weasel]

Turn off the software firewall and run the Shields Up test. If it does alright on the port scan tests then don't see why you should keep running the norton firewall. I can see why people say 2 firewalls are better than one but when you do actually need to run a server and free up some ports it's a big enough pain in the ass just doing it once let alone twice.

Having the software firewall switched on as well has the hardware firewall is better as the software firewall will tell you about, and block outgoing connections.

If for some reason something like Gator gets installed on your PC the software firewall will fire up an alert to tell you its trying to get an outbound connection.

The hardware firewall only protects you aginst unsolicited inbound connections. In the Gator case, the connection is solicited so would be allowed through the Hardware firewall.

I run a software firewall on all my machines as well as the hardware router.