Is Netgear wireless router firewall sufficient?

[TacoVendor]

First off a bit of background:

In my day job I run computer networks and security for a few companies. I am not a consultant, but am at the parent company for these. These companies are most likely brand names you have at least heard of if you are in the US. Previous to now I did the same work on a much bigger scale for a large multi-national bank.

For the typical home user that is not running some type of high dollar web-commerce system out of their house, the Netgear line of products will suit you just fine. It is what I recommend to people that ask me about such things for home use. What you get vs. what you pay for these products is an outstanding value.

I will setup single computers behind those firewalls with nothing more than WinXP SP2's firewall running behind it. If I was confident that people would never remove their hardware based firewall then I wouldn't even have that software turned on. Cable and DSL tech support like to have people remove such devices when troubleshooting though.

Taking that into account, I would actually discourage people from actively running ZoneAlarm (and the like) in such a fashion that blocks outside connections. A real case that I came across recently had someone running both software and hardware based firewalls and there were certain URL's (internet sites) that would just never come up. The firewalls just had something happening between them both that caused this. That said, I do like ZoneAlarm in the fact that it can alert you to software on the computer trying to connect out. Those types of things are good to know.

As for Linksys equipment, their firewall functions seem to work just fine, but I am not the fondest of their actual networking functions in the devices. Numerous tests have shown that Linksys devices tend to drop packets, which leads to retransmissions from your computer, which leads to a 'slowing down' of your connection. Typically you won't be able to notice such things due to the speed of it all happening, but knowing that a comperably priced product (Netgear) just works better doing the same thing, I will buy that instead.

Someone else mentioned a 'true hardware firewall' - Sonicwall. First off, the Netgear devices are 'true hardware firewalls', but I think what you mean is something that can do true stateful packet inspections well. For very comperable prices you can purchase Cisco devices that do the same thing, and Cisco is the industry leader.

I know this is a lengthy reply to a short question, but I figured I could just address my thoughts on other posts here all at once.

[Yads]

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Linksys does have a firewall according to their website

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Very few linksys products have firewalls.

[AncientPC]

Don't forget to secure your wireless access too.

[JPNet]

Both the Linksys BFR14 wired router, and the Linksys Wireless router have built in firewalls, as do D-Link, Netgear and 2Wire, and I believe Belkin as well.

[SamJack]

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I believe all hardware routers have the firewall builtin, but you may was to read some security posts made here in the past week about spyware, keyloggers, etc, you may want to install a software firewall like zonealarm(its free, the basic version anyway) and also detects software on your computer trying to send out without your knowledge.

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All wireless routers linksys and netgear allow you to confiure the routers only allow access of certain ports, etc. So, yes they can serve as a firewall.

More sophicated firewalls (hardware or software) allow for more control beyond simply blocking certain ports. e.g. Block access based on URL, blocking access per known threats, etc.

Firewalss are can be effective against unwanted access to your systems, however, they will not protect you against, spyware and viruses.

SamJack

[aeakos]

TacoVender pointed out some very good things. I am a Network Engineer myself. I would suggest that if you are using the wireless network that you use 128bit WEP Encryption along with MAC address filtering. This is a bare minimalist security feature that most all wireless routes can use. Some other routers do have more advanced wireless encrpytion features, but I highly doubt Netgear does.

If you use these two measures above, you should be fine.

As far as the firewall goes, if it is a TRUE firewall, not just using NAT as a "so called firewall" then I think you are good. Linksys routers in the past used their NAT as a quasi-firewall, which is good, but not perfect.

Hopefully that made sense. There is all sorts of information on Linksys and Netgear firewalls and the wireless features I spoke about all over the internet. If you have any questions, feel free to PM me.