NZFF

We are finally getting broadband installed tomorrow (Orcon), and I am wondering now that I will be connected to the internet all the time, is it safe to turn my ZoneAlarm firewall off when playing flightsim?

I useually do this as to not clog up my CPU with background processes, but now I am not sure if there is anyway to disconnect from the net before doing this?

Any help please...

From what I knwo of Broadband its as simple as turning the modem off with a single switch if you wana disconect.

Its an external modem ae?

I normally leave a firewall running all the time. I certainly wouldn't want to spend any time connected to the net without it. However if you don't intend to use the connection while simming (which rules out real weather and online flying) then you can just pull the plug on the modem.
ZA is a bit of a resource hog while it detects internet activity, but otherwise it is quite well-behaved.

Yea, keep it going when you are connected.

Alex

Yeah, your Firewall should be on at all times that you're connected. However if you're looking to save resources you could shut down your virus program while you're simming.

ive got broadband, and its always connected to the internet, but i dont even have a firewall or anti virus and Im fine!! I find it an unneccesary waste of resources B)

brownbox wrote: ive got broadband, and its always connected to the internet, but i dont even have a firewall or anti virus and Im fine!! I find it an unneccesary waste of resources B)

Err, are you 100% sure?

Alex

ive got broadband, and its always connected to the internet, but i dont even have a firewall or anti virus and Im fine!! I find it an unneccesary waste of resources

man thats like playing russian roulette with all six chambers loaded - after you old boy!

haha of course I am. Ok, I HAVE AVG Free and Spybot S&D, but they arent on at all. I do a scan about once every half year and it only ever finds a small handful of things

Ive only ever had one nasty virus, and that was the one that used 100% of the CPU on my old old computer

i disable the antivirus whenever i play FSX to free up CPU/memory
i only use the windows firewall, it seems to do the trick- it's always on and i've had no issues with it preventing online access

Well in my fight for good fps I used to alwasy turn of firewall and avast before starting fs, but this gives me no incress in perforamce at all! So I just leave it on now, save myself the effort of turning it off....

brownbox wrote: haha of course I am. Ok, I HAVE AVG Free and Spybot S&D, but they arent on at all. I do a scan about once every half year and it only ever finds a small handful of things 

Ive only ever had one nasty virus, and that was the one that used 100% of the CPU on my old old computer

dosent mean to say you dont have anyone nosing around in your system, I would really recommend a firewall as I work for a telco and the statistics of covert malliceous attacks is staggering.

Trolly if you are worried about resource issues with your firewall you should do what I did and get yourself a Broadband router with a built in firewall as then you require no PC resource whatsoever and it is a more secure type of firewall.

ive got windows firewall....

oh yeah my routers got a firewall too. A good one at that