so im curious... which is really the best? ok, its obvious that a real firewall (i.e. hardware, router, etc) is much better and secure, but alot of people still dont use them. i dont anymore, because im just on a dial up connection now, and well.. who runs a router with a dial up? so the three software firewalls that i could come up with were sygate personal firewall, zonealarm, and kerio personal firewall. then of course theres my winxp built in firewall. ive used them all, so which is best? has anyone seen any comparisons done? any data to support any claims? tests? ive played around with all of them, and have used zonealarm and keiro most. i use them both, on different computers, obviously. just curious...

For about a month I was running four computers off of one 56k connection, and yeah it sucked

portblocker as a part of a collection of little tools. Sometimes Word fucks up ...

Don't really know, but there's probably some article in some magazine SOMEWHERE on the net that does a comparison, I think I saw one and that's why I hate Black Ice.

IPTables It's clearly the most versatile.
However, I know you were asking about a windows based firewall with a GUI and all so I will say kerio personal firewall. It seems to work well and its lightweight.

all firewalls are software. Sometimes they run off of specialized hardware, but they're all software...

I have a big brick wall in my room, that my phone line goes through. Every morning I set it on fire, and i havent been ha.,0red up yet by the 1337 kewls!

Lol. I'm using 56k dial-up and I use Zone Alarm Pro but Zone Alarm does the job just as well. I haven't tried the others so I have to say Zone Alarm.