Anyone know a good fire wall program

andymike, with firewalls you have 2 choices, either a software or hardware solution.

Software solutions are cheaper but they have problems, mainly that the software has to run on your PC which not only uses your PC's resources but also allows any potential hackers to "virtually" touch your PC before they hit the firewall. This makes software firewalls less secure.

Getting a hardware solution is much more secure since any garbage traffic is stopped at a device that is between your PC and the scary internet. And since they are their own systems, if you have a serious attack which requires heavy resources to deflect, the hardware firewall will be able to handle this much more gracefully. Of course this is a more expensive soltution, but its really not that much more expensive anymore. Lots of hardware firewalls have integrated a dsl modem and/or cable connector so if you are just setting up on broadband the price difference between your normal setup hardware and a firewall setup is minimal.

For suggestions, I would recommend norton or mcafee products, they are both industry standards, are pretty high quality with good updates and support and are pretty cheap. I would stay away from free programs like black ice, there are so many known hacks for these programs that any hacker would consider them only a small bump on the road to raiding your system. For hardware firewalls, cisco is tops but there are a lot of smaller vendors out there. I am really not familiar with all the different products so you may be best to ask at your local PC shop.

Well, hope that all helps!

Cheers,

Luke