if you have a choice between software or hardware firewalls, which is the better choice and why?

Answer 1

Firewalls are designed to keep your privacy and your PC safe. A Firewall can either be hardware or software. Hardware firewalls are generally used to protect large networks of computers whereas software firewalls are generally used to protect one computer at a time.

Software firewalls offer basic defense from outside and inside attacks. In addition, they let you move from network to network. Hardware firewalls provide an additional outer layer of defense that can more effectively hide one or more connected PCs, blocking miscreants via a secure, dedicated platform.

Hardware firewalls are important because they provide a strong degree of protection from most forms of attack coming from the outside world. Additionally, in most cases, they can be effective with little or no configuration, and they can protect every machine on a local network.

A hardware firewall in a typical broadband router employs a technique called packet filtering, which examines the header of a packet to determine its source and destination addresses. This information is compared to a set of predefined and/or user-created rules that determine whether the packet is to be forwarded or dropped. A more advanced technique called Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI), looks at additional characteristics such as a packet's actual origin (i.e. did it come from the Internet or from the local network) and whether incoming traffic is a response to existing outgoing connections, like a request for a Web page.

Found another article on the web having some additional info.link below.

hope it helps.

Answer 2

Definitly both. A hardware firewall and a software firewall keep out different things. If you have a router you probably have a hardware firewall (assuming you turned it on). For a software one get Zonealarm - free for personal use and you would be amazed by the amount of stuff it stops.

Answer 3

As several people have said, it's best to have both. But having one is certainly better than having none at all. If you are using Windows XP you have a built in firewall. Maybe not the absolute best in the world, but better than nothing.

If you go to a web site by Gibson Research Corporation (www.grc.com) you can run their free utility called ShieldsUp. It will tell you how well protected your computer is.

Hope this helps a little.

Answer 4

Hello dear
Both are good and necessary for special work like :
for home security only software is sufficient and for servers both are necessary.
good luck

Answer 5

both