Firewall Software for SOHO (Small Office or Home Office)

I think most of you already knew about Zone Alarm, Norton Personal Firewall, Sygate Personal Firewall, Kerio Personal Firewall / Sunbelt Personal Firewall, and many other personal firewall software. But if you run a Small to Medium sized business, i'm sure that those firewall can’t satisfy your needs especially if you got bored of pop up message saying that your application needs access to the internet and you need to make rules for it first before it can access the internet

And thanks to that annoying popup message, i decided to try another firewall software for my windows xp box from Kerio called Kerio Winroute Firewall / KWF. Suprisingly this firewall get the job very well unlike many other firewall, and it does not disturb me with annoying popup message. And if you ask me what is the main features of KWF that other firewall does not have ?

Well here’s the main features of KWF with my own explaination about it :

1. Built-in Content filtering : If you need to block specific site from displaying ads, or control which site can be accessed from your network this feature really useful for you. Other than that you can also deny web pages that contains forbidden words such as sex, porn from being loaded. Another good example is you can block Streaming files from being loaded automatically by defining it’s mime type (i'm using this to save my monthly internet usage)
2. Has Transparent or Non Transparent Proxy Server / Cache Proxy Server : This feature could be useful to you if you want to speed up your browsing experience, but if it’s for me, i use it in conjunction with Squid Proxy server installed on my machine to make it even more useful. But if you don’t run Squid cache proxy on your machine, you can also use the built in features of KWF to cache pages
3. Antivirus Scanning to scan HTTP Traffic : With the integrated McAfee Antivirus scanning engine built into KWF, it’ll scan everypage for harmful objects. But if you don’t feel like using the integrated McAfee scan engine you can also use other supported antivirus software
4. Built-in VPN : If you want to set up VPN access to your machine, you can do it easily using KWF
5. Blocking P2P Network : Let’s say, you run an internet cafe business and you don’t want your client / users to use P2P program. You can enable this feature to block all P2P network from being used
6. Sharing Internet Connection : You can share internet access within your network easily with KWF, even you can limit the bandwidth used for your client
7. DNS Forwarder, Configuring Users and more

What’s Kerio Interface Looks like ?

HTTP Policy

Traffic Policy

Filters Log

So what are the actual differences between KWF and other Firewall software ?

By default Kerio Winroute Firewall block all traffic unlike many other firewall, which means you can’t access the internet without configuring it first (of course this is the most safest way). And if there’s an application requesting access to the internet (in most case it’s going to be Online Games or MMORPG Games), you’ll need to know which port those games used to access the internet before it can access the net

And as i said before, that KWF is different from other firewal because it did not show you any popup message prompting you to insert new internet access rules

Wow .. it’s sound difficult for me to configure KWF ?

Actually it’s easy (depending on your computer technical experience), by looking at the Filters log, you can see which address and which port are used from your games easily :) But as you can see that this firewall is intended to those who run Small to Medium sized business

If it’s for business class that means KWF is a little bit expensive ?

That’s true. The KWF version with McAfee Scan Engine included cost for about $499 for 10 users and KWF without McAfee cost for about $399. But to those who are running small business, i'm pretty sure the KWF price is quite normal. For more detail you can read more from KWF Pricing page

And that’s all about it ;)