[alex_wlu_82]

... that is easy to configure
... allows me to block certain IP's, and ranges of IP's
... easy to uninstall
... and that won't affect my computer acting as a DHCP host for a windows computer

There are quite a few out there, so.. which one is the best for what i need it for?

ideally, i would like to use apple's built in firewall, if anyone can point me to an explanation on how to block ip's.

[Ryan McGann]

Originally posted by alex_wlu_82:
... that is easy to configure
... allows me to block certain IP's, and ranges of IP's
... easy to uninstall
... and that won't affect my computer acting as a DHCP host for a windows computer

There are quite a few out there, so.. which one is the best for what i need it for?

ideally, i would like to use apple's built in firewall, if anyone can point me to an explanation on how to block ip's.

Apple's GUI has no way of doing what you need. Use Norton Personal Firewall or better yet Norton Internet Security (it includes AntiVirus and firewall).

[proton]

I really wouldn't recommend any Norton's products for running on OS X. I've heard of far too many problems with them.

You may want to use Brickhouse as a GUI for OS X's builtin firewall. It hasn't been updated in quite a while, but it still works just fine.

- proton

[Don Pickett]

Originally posted by proton:
I really wouldn't recommend any Norton's products for running on OS X. I've heard of far too many problems with them.

You may want to use Brickhouse as a GUI for OS X's builtin firewall. It hasn't been updated in quite a while, but it still works just fine.

- proton

Brickhouse works fine in Panther. You can use it to do a general set up of rules for OS X's built in firewall (ipfw) and use Terminal to fine tune things.

[Ryan McGann]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by proton:
I really wouldn't recommend any Norton's products for running on OS X. I've heard of far too many problems with them.

You may want to use Brickhouse as a GUI for OS X's builtin firewall. It hasn't been updated in quite a while, but it still works just fine.

- proton [/QUOTE
<rant>
Honestly I think you only hear of people who have problems, not the people whose butts Norton Utilities has saved, or the people who use the other products without incident. You don't see many "Gosh I love my Norton product, it works great!" posts because people don't post when things are alright, they only post when they have a bone to pick.

Case in point: Panther recently ate several people's FireWire hard drives in a well-publicized incident. People ranted like crazy. Cnet and many other non-Mac sites slammed Apple heavily. But if you read carefully, it was a 3rd party issue, not Apple's fault, and it happened on a (very) small percentage of hard drives out there. You didn't see a lot of people posting "Apple did a great job with Panther's FireWire 400 drivers!" but I saw plenty of people with incredibly ill-informed posts threatening legal action. In fact most people were ranting without ever having encountered the problem first hand.

The same happens with other software. One person says "Norton ate my hard drive" (which may or may not have been Symantec's fault) and suddenly a thousand people swear up and down Norton Utilities sucks, when in fact most people never have problems, nor have ever expierienced problems themselves.
</rant>

[Ryan McGann]

And back on topic, Brickhouse is OK, but its rules are quite lax. The last time I checked, it didn't even do stateful packet inspection.

Firewall rules take some skill in setting up, and Brickhouse doesn't do much hand-holding. Firewalk X and Norton Personal Firewall create much stronger rulesets, though Firewalk X is one of the hardest to use programs out there if you don't know what you're doing.

Firewalk X and NPF both have other features besides the firewall such as application control for Firewalk X and connected users for Personal Firewall. Personal Firewall and Firewalk X both work in Panther, BTW.

Ryan

(Edited to fix some spelling mistakes.)

[typoon]

NetBarrier X From intego. is my vote.