firewall is a heavy hitter - is that good ?

i have been using a somewhat off-the-wall but seemingly extra-safe software firewall ( "securepoint ") for several months now, and have noted that it eats a considerable amount of cpu time, does what i would consider a significantly excessive amount of i/o, and is way off the charts on page faults... all this, and it usually seems to slip off of the task bar system tray as being active, which is maybe a mis-interpretation on my part...

so, i have never really noted comparable stats on prior firewalls used, but i was wondering if i should be concerned about the extra heavy resource consumption, or if the apparent over-activity is indicative of a firewall just doing it's job...?

 

Hi keywester,

Can't answer your question on securepoint, one of the downsides of using obscure software - not many people will be familiar with it, and get a consensus on how it's doing it's job and the best way to configure it.

IMO, the top tier firewalls all do the job, the differences are in ease of use, options, and resource usage. The greatest threats are not firewall penetrations, but Browser holes, that's what you should be concentrating on.

Regards - Charles

 

I've never seen my firewall (eTrust- eg; Zone Alarm) use over 1% CPU, no matter how many apps I have accessing the internet.