People Crashing Your TFC Connection/Game... ?

[Dave_07]

So could I download SPI and patch it to my firewall for added protection ?

[malfunction]

Take this with a pinch of salt as I'm a bit rusty but:

You need to only allow packets in from known IP addreses and / or packets that are 'return packets' - i.e. packets that are returned in answer to your queries (your PC makes outgoing connections and only packets coming back in 'on' those connections are allowed in - any inbound connections are dropped)... This is where stateful packet inspection comes in IIRC - basically a 'reply' packet is flagged as such but fake return packets can be created... A stateful firewall will check packets marked as returned packets against outgoing connections - and only if they come from the right IP address and port (and are sent back to the right IP address and port) are they let in. A stateless firewall IIRC only checks the packet to see if it's marked as a 'return' packet (so lets anything in that matches your rules even if isn't for an active connection)...

Blimey... I need to read up on firewalls again... I'll check I'm not talking total BS later / tomorrow and post back if I've made any mistakes.

As far as I'm aware ZoneAlarm (the free one at least) can't do what you need. I can't think of any free programs that can do what you need - I've used WinRoute before and it's not easy to set up but it does work well... I've also used Checkpoint (which is easy to set up) but that's damn expensive...

[directhex]

zonealarm kinda sucks, try sygate, it might have more luck