Linksys Router - Throw away Zonealarm?

[purecomedy]

Just set up a Linksys router. I played around with the idea of keeping zonealarm around but it seemed to screw up internet access so I shut it down for now, will play with it some more.

I'm wondering though, if I've got this router is there still benefit to keeping zonealarm around? For instance, it's kind of good to know if there are any programs trying to access the internet without your knowledge.

Any thoughts or advice for the best security strategy I should go with?

[The_Lurker]

Originally posted by purecomedy
Just set up a Linksys router. I played around with the idea of keeping zonealarm around but it seemed to screw up internet access so I shut it down for now, will play with it some more.

I'm wondering though, if I've got this router is there still benefit to keeping zonealarm around? For instance, it's kind of good to know if there are any programs trying to access the internet without your knowledge.

Any thoughts or advice for the best security strategy I should go with?

I have always kept ZA as well as my Zyxel firewall/router. just for the reasons you state. altho' I have never had any trouble with ZA on any OS I've run it on from 98se to XP it has been trouble free.

what probs are you having with ZA?
I'm sure if I don't have the answers someone else does and can help.

anyways, goodluck

cheers!

[YeOldeStonecat]

It's all up to what level you feel you want to know about what's going on. Keeping my computers up to date with Windows critical updates, good updated antivirus, and I know what I'm doing online with my computer....NAT router is all I want/need. Others may not be so careful about their stuff, or have some users which may not be carefull...and therefore having an additional software firewall might be of some use.

[§I€MFKR™]

Good to have a SW firewall as well. But you should throw away ZA anyway. Here is the free download of sygate.

Sygate Download (http://smb.sygate.com/buy/download_buy.htm)

[purecomedy]

Okay the problem is not zonealarm. It seems like the router works fine, then I surf for about 3 minutes and it can't connect to the internet.

So I go back to the "homepage" of the router and just save the settings again and it works for 3 minutes or so. What the hell is going on here. I always have this kind of luck, the instructions make it sound easy and then there is always a problem.

What are some of the potential problems here? It's windows 2000, I'm using DHCP....should be pretty straightforward isn't it?

HELP!

I'm going to set it up in Windows Me and see if it fairs any better.

[YeOldeStonecat]

You on cable? Or DSL?

[purecomedy]

Cable.

The same problem occurs in my Win ME partition. It takes about 5 minutes to fail instead of 2-3 minutes in Win2k Pro.

Under DHCP you normally leave the Host name and Domain name fields empty right, I shouldn't be putting something in there correct? I noticed that the submask seems to alternate between 255.255.255.0 and 255.255.254.0 (in Win2k Pro). The other weird thing, in WinME when I go to ipconfig it appears that there are 2 of them even though I only have 1 NIC!

I guess I'm a little worried that if I try to contact my ISP (Shaw cable) they'll basically tell me to screw off because they don't support routers (I'm sure they hate routers because people don't buy additional IPs for their other machines). Thing is, I've only got 1 machine.

The main thing I can think of doing is trying different cables, I introduced 1 new wire that I suppose could be bad. The other one I have used for years. I suppose also I could try updating drivers for my 3com NIC and flashing the BIOS on the router. I'm a little confused about the BIOS version because I think it's version 1.04.3 but dated June 3, 2003 whereas the linksys site has 1.44 BIOS dated sometime in Nov 2002. Is 1.04.3 really more like 1.43, or is it literally way way behind like 1.043?

From previous posts I have read it seems like flashing the router bios never helps.

Any advice anyone can offer would be much appreciated. TIA.

[purecomedy]

I'll create a new thread about this considering it is no longer about Zonealarm.

See here:

http://forums.speedguide.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=126498