Author Topic: Comodo Personal Firewall: what do you like about it?  (Read 127972 times)

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rdmaloyjr

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Re: Comodo Personal Firewall: what do you like about it?
« Reply #15 on: July 08, 2007, 09:19:40 PM »
VLK,
Any guess of when the beta of APF will be out?

Spyros

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Re: Comodo Personal Firewall: what do you like about it?
« Reply #16 on: July 08, 2007, 11:19:01 PM »
I was just wondering: what is it that you like about Comodo PF?

I don't like it!  ;D i always liked Kerio a lot more. It is very easy to use!

it is probably no secret that we're working on our own PF

Finally I can open my (big) mouth about it! Anybody remember this post of me, back in September 2006 about Alwil's "secret project"  ;) --> http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=23763.0

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Re: Comodo Personal Firewall: what do you like about it?
« Reply #17 on: July 08, 2007, 11:28:15 PM »
When ???   When ???  When ???
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drhayden1

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Re: Comodo Personal Firewall: what do you like about it?
« Reply #18 on: July 08, 2007, 11:45:16 PM »
Bob really meant NOW ;D Now  ;D Now  ;D
i can wait till is GREAT 8) GREAT 8) GREAT 8)

neal62

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Re: Comodo Personal Firewall: what do you like about it?
« Reply #19 on: July 09, 2007, 08:46:15 AM »
Hi Vlk,
For your information I tried Comodo P.F. and did not like it. To me it wasn't user friendly, slowed down my pc and I suspected was very P2P oriented. I use Sunbelt Kerio P.F. and haven't had any problems with it. I like what I am using. Guess it's just a matter of "different strokes for different folks".  :)
« Last Edit: July 09, 2007, 08:50:43 AM by neal63 »

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Re: Comodo Personal Firewall: what do you like about it?
« Reply #20 on: July 09, 2007, 09:41:19 AM »
Comodo Firewall is actually pretty nice (apart lack of Vista compatibility), though resource consumption was rather high compared to some other firewalls. I'll give few reasons what i like and dislike...

1. I always want nice trey icons. Thats one and first rule for any of my programs. I watch those icons all the time in trey bar and i don't want some crappy jagged icons with awful graphics or meaningles icon like Outposts blue question mark. WTF!? If there is a traffic indicator, it has to be optional. I liked avast!-s spinning ball but i prefer it stationary, because i was staring at it most of the time, instead doing something productive. If there is an option to enable/disable it, thats cool :)

2. Must be P2P compatible out of the box (especially with eMule which puts every firewall to a test).
This means it should act as Stealthed but should also not drop important packets and choke itself on resource side like ZoneAlarm does with eMule (starts to consume massive amounts of memory and CPU, badly affecting PC's speed). Sygate, Outpost, Comodo and Windows Firewall never had such problems.

3. There has to be 2 modes, Basic and Advanced. Some prefer all the features and tightest leak control (Advanced).
I don't need that as it's annoying (for me alone) but i like to keep basic control over programs connecting to internet (Basic).
So, a program checking without crosslinking over DLL's and other mechanisms. Just direct programs connection monitoring. I don't want firewall to be annoying, which becomes quiet fast even if you have massive programs database.

4. Logical and easy to use interface with settings properly categorized and arranged so you don't have to look for them over entire interface.

5. Warning popup has to be nice looking, peferably displayed as popup above clock (similar to blue VPS update popup just a bit different so you can notice the difference and of course a bit larger) or similar to McAfee Firewall popup. I liked that very much. Also info on it is displayed nicely so almost anyone can understand it.

6. It has to pass ShieldsUp tests with flying colored numbers. I know it's not much but it's a basic thing that every firewall worth using should pass (while still allow P2P tools to work properly!, this part is especially tricky because most of firewalls pass the ShieldsUp but bork up the P2P apps to the max, mostly with it's ping handling engine!). Comodo required tweaking in the Network Monitor part to even work properly on both fronts (as mentioned earlier).

So much for now. I'm really looking forward to test this tool, hope there will be a free edition of it too :)
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Offline FreewheelinFrank

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Re: Comodo Personal Firewall: what do you like about it?
« Reply #21 on: July 09, 2007, 01:14:58 PM »
Quote
2. Must be P2P compatible out of the box (especially with eMule which puts every firewall to a test).
This means it should act as Stealthed but should also not drop important packets and choke itself on resource side like ZoneAlarm does with eMule (starts to consume massive amounts of memory and CPU, badly affecting PC's speed).

I've used eMule with ZA on two computers, both 1.8GHz machines, the newer one a dual core machine. ZA worked with eMule "out of the box" with no problems on either machine.

Comodo does not work "out of the box" with eMule: even allowing it server rights results in the mule wearing a mask in the tray: a low ID.

Comodo requires a special rule to work with eMule.

http://forums.comodo.com/faq_for_comodo_firewall/emule_and_bittorent_tuttorials-t411.0.html

I agree that Kerio is excellent in the user-friendliness of its pop ups: green is good, red is bad- that's pretty easy to understand. ZA is OK too with alerts that tell you an application 'wants to access the internet' wants to access the trusted zone' and 'wants to act a server'.

One drawback for Kerio is that visiting Shields Up! generates red pop-ups for incoming connections- these must be blocked with a rule for the firewall to pass this and other stealth tests- ZA blocks these connections "out of the box". One good point for Kerio is that it allows you to block incoming connections for all new applications. With ZA I occasionally get a blue pop-up telling me an application is trying to act as a server: it doesn't seem to be possible to block all new applications from accepting connections by default.

Comodo pop-ups used to talk about TCP/UDP connections- meaning it was only for people who understood network connections, but the new version has dropped these messages, talking about applications wanting to access the internet or act as a server a la ZA, but Firefox generated a message about the application wanting to act a server with a network address. This required a Google serach for information:

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=117569

ZA simply says that Firefox wants to access the trusted zone, which is a lot more understandable.

Kerio was my personal choice on my old computer until it suddenly stopped loading at boot up, when I switched to ZA. Previous to that it had intermittently refused to load and been the cause of more than a few BSOD's.

I tried Kerio on my new computer but it crashed twice immediately after installing. I reckon Kerio is the most buggy of the trio- ZA runs without a hitch, and so did Comodo during my brief trial.

To extract the main points from the above:

  • A firewall should be stable.
  • A firewall should stealth the computer by default.
  • A firewall should have pop-ups that can be understood without knowing about network protocols and IP addresses.
  • A firewall should work "out of the box" and not require special rules for individual applications.

It's also reassuring to know that a firewall will block intrusion attempts: Symantec firewall (one of the best) used to download intrusion signatures from time to time just like an AV program- not sure how useful this feature was, but it was very impressive. ZA occasionally updates itself, and I've read this is to respond to new intrusion methods. For me it's good to know intrusion detection is there, even though I don't understand it.

Well, that's just about everthing I like or don't like about firewalls: hope it's useful.  ::) 
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mauserme

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Re: Comodo Personal Firewall: what do you like about it?
« Reply #22 on: July 09, 2007, 01:37:17 PM »
I agree that Kerio is excellent in the user-friendliness of its pop ups: green is good, red is bad ...
"green is good, red is bad" is not so good for us colorblind users.  The alerts should always include a graphic or text.

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Re: Comodo Personal Firewall: what do you like about it?
« Reply #23 on: July 09, 2007, 02:30:22 PM »
ZoneAlarm doesn't work even though you may think it does. It's dropping packets that it shouldn't and overal eMule performance is very bad compared to other firewalls. Sources take long to connect and some never even connect properly.
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Offline FreewheelinFrank

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Re: Comodo Personal Firewall: what do you like about it?
« Reply #24 on: July 09, 2007, 02:37:25 PM »
Quote
The alerts should always include a graphic or text.

There is text as well.

http://www.geocities.com/dontsurfinthenude/kerio_setup.htm

Quote
ZoneAlarm doesn't work even though you may think it does.

I'll bear that in mind, but since Comodo requires a rule and Kerio was unstable, I seem to be stuck with ZA.

It always seems to perform OK, well enough for me anyway.

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Offline Lisandro

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Re: Comodo Personal Firewall: what do you like about it?
« Reply #25 on: July 09, 2007, 08:34:01 PM »
Sunbelt Kerio P.F.
We were very close to get this engine 8)

5. Warning popup has to be nice looking, peferably displayed as popup above clock (similar to blue VPS update popup just a bit different so you can notice the difference and of course a bit larger) or similar to McAfee Firewall popup. I liked that very much. Also info on it is displayed nicely so almost anyone can understand it.
The answer to the screen message, the time to answer, is poor... you can wait for the firewall to 'remove' the message after you click the "Allow" or "Deny" button.

Comodo does not work "out of the box" with eMule: even allowing it server rights results in the mule wearing a mask in the tray: a low ID. Comodo requires a special rule to work with eMule.
http://forums.comodo.com/faq_for_comodo_firewall/emule_and_bittorent_tuttorials-t411.0.html

Comodo required tweaking in the Network Monitor part to even work properly on both fronts (as mentioned earlier).
Well, other firewalls requires this tweaking too in order to allow High ID of P2P, don't they?

Comodo pop-ups used to talk about TCP/UDP connections- meaning it was only for people who understood network connections, but the new version has dropped these messages
You can configure this to low-level of disturbing questions...
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Offline polonus

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Re: Comodo Personal Firewall: what do you like about it?
« Reply #26 on: July 09, 2007, 08:51:51 PM »
Hi Tech,

Comodo is fine, and allows Torpark with Privoxy enabled, but is not free of an occasional bug there to close it, allthough it isn't at bad as ZA that closes down all the time.
Comodo then reports: "You have found a bug in COMODO, now it has to close down". Annoying, really.

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Re: Comodo Personal Firewall: what do you like about it?
« Reply #27 on: July 09, 2007, 09:01:25 PM »
Tech, i meant the look and feel of the popups, not how they work. I hate firewalls that display screen centered warnings (warning in the middle of the screen). Donno why but i hate that. I like if antiviruses do the same but so far avast! warnings were never annoying because of this.
Unless if they'll make same popup dialog just with different graphics (red burning wall instead spining radioactive logo ;) ).
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Re: Comodo Personal Firewall: what do you like about it?
« Reply #28 on: July 09, 2007, 09:19:52 PM »
Quote
Well, other firewalls requires this tweaking too in order to allow High ID of P2P, don't they?

ZA doesn't.

Quote
ZA that closes down all the time.

 ??? ZA hasn't closed down once in six months on this machine. I guess different people just have different experiences with the same software on different machines.
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Re: Comodo Personal Firewall: what do you like about it?
« Reply #29 on: July 10, 2007, 12:02:49 AM »
I hate firewalls that display screen centered warnings (warning in the middle of the screen).
You're not alone ;D

ZA doesn't.
Well... isn't it worse? Allowing server rights to all ports?
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