Aggressive Firewalls??

[blackfive]

I had been having problems with premature disconnections from my ISP, sometimes after only a few minutes, which is annoying and expensive in phone charges. This weekend I tried an experiment and disabled my firewall before connecting to the 'net and kept it disabled - I haven't had a single disconnect! My question is, could this be purely coincidence or can a firewall interrupt your dial-up connection for some reason? My firewall is a free download from 'ZoneLabs.

[j2buttonsw]

Yes they can drop your connection. Firewalls are designed for "always on" internet connedctions so I think you are slightly paranoid having one with a dial-up internet account. As has been said before, there is no such thing as a free lunch so a free firewall is not as "good" as a purchased one. I would be far more concerned with anti-virus software than having a firewall.

[anthomson]

I would be very surprised if a firewall would cause the connection to drop and would still suspect your ISP or a noisy phone line. I am not sure I agree that you should only use a firewall if you have a permenent connection - they still provide a useful function even if you are only online 5 minutes a day. My free firewall has even detected a virus that got thru my Norton Anti-virus software. My advice is pay for good anti-virus software and use a firewall as well especially since you can get good firewalls for little or no money.