Firewall and Kazaa

[ManWithaPlan]

I read that certain firewalls like ZoneAlarm take up a lot of bandwidth and reduce download speeds in kazaa.

Is this true because i've just got broadband and was trying to work out what firewall will suit me and i thought of getting zonealarm but these comments about slowing down kazaa has made me wonder whether this is a good one.

Also BlackIce got mentioned as only being an intruder detecter rather than a blocker is this also true.

I would be grateful on any help for an easy to use firewall that does a good job but not slow down kazaa please.

[nfl2k2]

firewalls block ports, they don't slow down your internet traffic.

[sterno]

I read that certain firewalls like ZoneAlarm take up a lot of bandwidth and reduce download speeds in kazaa.

They don't use bandwidth, but software firewalls do increase overhead some for network traffic because they actually check to make sure that things are as they should be. Unless you have a very slow computer or very little memory you aren't likely to see a difference. The download speed difference between running with and without ZoneAlarm is less than the difference between running Kazaa as the foreground application and running it in the background while you use tmpgenc or a word processor or something.

Overall, the free version of ZoneAlarm is probably the best basic PC firewall program for the average user.

Also BlackIce got mentioned as only being an intruder detecter rather than a blocker is this also true.

It is neither an intrusion detector nor a firewall. BlackIce Defender is a scam meant to take advantage of people's ignorance. Nobody with any real knowledge of security will tell you anything different.