ZDNet Labs tests personal firewalls
ZDNet Labs used free dial-up ISP Juno and the Internet security testing site ShieldsUp to test the firewall protection capabilities of Norton Personal Firewall 2002, McAfee Firewall 3.0, ZoneAlarm 2.6, Tiny Personal Firewall 2.0.14 and BlackIce 2.5. All applications were tested at the highest security setting.
We began our testing with IP Agent, a free utility provided by ShieldsUp that determines the test machine's current IP address, then contacts the ShieldsUp Web site to begin testing.
Next, the Port Probe utility tested our test system's defense against Internet port scanners. The test originates from the ShieldsUp server and attempts to establish standard TCP/IP (Internet) connections on a handful of standard Internet service ports on the test computer.
The different ports we tested were:
Port 21-FTP
Port 23-Telnet
Port 25-SMTP
Port 79-Finger
Port 80-HTTP
Port 110-POP3
Port 113-IDENT
Port 130-NetBIOS
Port 143-IMAP
Port 443-HTTPS
Each port gives one of the three following test results.
Stealth: This result means that the probe was not able to find this particular port on your computer. This is the most secure result.
Closed: This shows that the probe was able to detect this particular port on your computer but the connection was refused.
Open: This result means that the port is actively advertising its presence on the Internet. Port scanners will have no trouble finding this port.
More information on these tests and what the results mean can be found at ShieldsUp.
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| • | ZDNet recommends | • | ZoneAlarm 2.6 |
| • | Norton Personal Firewall 2002 | • | McAfee Firewall 3.0 |
| • | BlackIce Defender 2.5 | • | Tiny Personal Firewall 2.0.14 |
| • | Feature comparison | • | ZDNet Labs tests personal firewalls |
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