[AT] OT virus warning

[Mike Sloane]

charlie hill wrote:
> Mike,  In my case it wasn't a matter of the router getting slow it was just 
> slower than being hardwired to the modem.  I couldn't run things like 
> streaming audio or video on the router.  I decided I'd rather be tied to the 
> wall and have the extra speed so I disconnected it.
I encountered just the opposite - I tried running Zone Alarm, and it 
slowed the PC down considerably. The hardware router (actually a 
misnomer - it is really a "firmware" router) should not impact 
throughput at all - it only looks at requests for ports. I have never 
had to tell the router what to do with anything, in or out.

Mike
> 
> Zone Alarm does a great job of controlling what gets in and out.  The 
> problem comes with actually trying to figure out what some of these programs 
> that want to access the Internet are.  As David said, everything from your 
> mouse and printers to, in my case, some of my business software constantly 
> want access to the web.  The programs names that show up on the Zone Alarm 
> list often are not familiar to me.  Sometimes I try searching for them 
> online.  I still can't always figure them out  and when I can I'm often not 
> sure if it's something I can block access to without causing a problem. 
> Believe me,  when I have only a few minutes to get a very big file 
> transmitted in PDF format, I don't want to start trying to remember what I 
> turned off or limited access to a week before.
> 
> The current list on my Zone Alarm of programs that want access to the 
> Internet numbers into well over 100.  I just don't know where to start or 
> how to sort them out.
> 
> Charlie