It's not an either or type of decision; they do different jobs for the most part. A hardware firewall usually takes no effort to setup, but does the least to protect your pc. A software firewall catches many more potential problems than a hardware firewall, but takes a lot of effort to setup and understand. It's theoretically possible it could be disabled, but I've never seen a report of it actually happening to anyone. The free firewall that comes with XP SP2 is kind of strange in that it is a software firewall that acts like a hardware firewall (that is, rather poorly, but is little trouble to operate). The *real* software firewalls really can be a *lot* of trouble to operate and understand; it's very easy to set them up incorrectly so that they allow spyware to communicate, or you stop your valid software from performing some automatic function such as self-updating. MS should have put more effort into solving this issue, and I guess they are with their beta version of their anti-spyware tool. This will eventually catch spyware without making folks deal with the complexities of a software firewall. Chip Orange Database Administrator Florida Public Service Commission Chip.Orange@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (850) 413-6314 (Any opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Florida Public Service Commission.) _____ From: jfw-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:jfw-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of chevelle Sent: Friday, July 01, 2005 10:24 PM To: jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: DSL question Hi, I would say if you are going to dsl or cable, it is definitely a good idea to have a firewall. YOu can still with the Norton firewall that you have or go with a hardware firewall built into a router. I would suggest going with a hardware firewall. For one thing today's spyware, and other bad programs are able and do disable a software firewall. They can't disable a hardware firewall. People will probably say you should have both, but it is up to you. I am only using a hardware firewall. Also since I've gone to a hardware firewall I don't have as many hastles as I used to. ----- Original Message ----- From: Judith Bron <mailto:jbron@xxxxxxxxxxx> To: jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Friday, July 01, 2005 3:00 PM Subject: DSL question Hi Friends, We are looking into getting DSL. Here are my questions: 1. How do I notify everyone in muy address book that my email address has changed? 2. Do I need a firewall or any other software with DSL? I have Norton corporate edition, windows 98 and Jaws 5.1. Thanks, Judith