Anyone know of a decent free windows based firewall, that meets these criterias?

1: wont be on by default when installing (or it will kick me off RDP, and I'll be screwed)
2: Works at IP/port level - not application level (ex: not like zone alarm)
3: Can block unlimited individual IP/ranges (ex: for banning people from game server at IP level)

I don't have any physical access options with my server and rather not pay extra for KVM or what not.


I'm thinking of coding my own but that's not an easy task.

Ah, Windows servers are something I know nothing about.

I did, however, want to welcome you to the forums as this is the first time I've seen you around here.

Welcome!

There was one product back in the day called Conseal PC Firewall. It was written by James Grant. I'm not sure what happened to Signal 9 (the company) in 2000, but it disappeared.

It seems the product is back(looks like the author brought it back with a new company name), however I can not vouche for its quality since its been resurrected, but I will go as far as to say I LOVED Conseal PC Firewall back on my Win 9x machine.

http://www.consealfirewall.com

If you end up trying it(free 30 day trial), let me know what you think.

Thanks for the welcome, and Merry Christmas. I've posted here before, but not a lot.

I'll have to check conseal firewall. Hoping for something free though, but if the 30 day end does not totally trash the program, I might use it anyway. I got a win2k3 test server at home I can test on.

I had an idea of using VMware to "route" through a Linux based firewall but that would be hard and risky to setup remotely.

Basically I'd remove TCP from the nic, bridge it to a VM, then make VM have a host only nic, which would be the inside network. I'd then forward the ports I need. Problem is if something goes wrong, and when I remove TCP from the nic, I pretty much have to KNOW that the firewall is routing traffic properly, or I'm screwed.

Only reason I use windows is due to the app that runs. Linux would make this so much easier. I know nothing about Linux firewalls, but at least I could learn to use em, and they are very powerful.

The performance you would get out of a VM running linux on a windows box as your firewall would be...bad. Ultimately the decrease in performance would be exponential as you get more and more traffic. Not to mention all the risk you run at losing access while trying to get it working in the first place.

Have you thought about using the default firewall that comes with windows?

I sue IPSEC... see http://www.analogx.com/contents/articles/ipsec.htm

I use the windows one now, but it does not offer what I need - the ability to block individual IPs completely.

IPSEC does allow you ability to block individual IP addresses and it's free. I use them to block annoying people I don't want to see on my Teamspeak servers.