To firewall or not?

[DieAGator]

Recently found was having trouble maintaining a wireless connection. Couldn't figure out why and decided to disable Zone Alarm and Windows Firewall and since then my computer stays connected, no problems. So now I'm surfing, presumably, without firewall protection.

However, I researched my modem/router and according to the specs has built in firewall protection. So, maybe I didn't realize it but running either ZA or WF was conflicting with the firewall built in to my router?

[orangeblueorangeblue]

There would be no conflict. A port is either open or closed. Closing it on hardware and software side wouldn't matter.

It's possible somehow you got port 80 or 8080 blocked on Zone Alarm.

In short, you'll want a firewall running, particularly if it's Windows. If you're going to rely on your router's firewall, you'll need to put a bit more effort into figuring out what you want to allow/block.

Zone Alarm is sort of a relic at this point, like much of AV being rendered arcane by MSSE, I find the Windows Firewall since Vista to do a good enough job without any real overhead.

[orangeblueorangeblue]

Also worth noting that your wireless connection should stay open even if you had every port blocked.

[DieAGator]

I'm a little confused. My wireless connection is more stable without the firewall. Maybe you are correct and I had ZA misconfigured. I removed ZA and disable windows firewall a few days when I was having connection problems yet my icon in security center still showed a firewall present.

I did go ahead and turn windows firewall on.

[orangeblueorangeblue]

There is another possibility, since you're talking about your connection.

You might have some malware that could be hammering a specific blocked out port causing the wireless connection to reset.

But since you said you recently reinstalled Windows that seems somewhat unlikely.

[DieAGator]

For whatever reason(s) I can connect stably though a WAN. My hardware is cable modem and wireless router coming off the modem. The modem has a wireless antenna so I connect to that, or apparently can connect from my wireless adapter to the wireless router. So right now it looks like I'm getting my throughput from the modem through the wireless router. And my laptop is humming along right now.

But why would it seem to be bypassing my modem's wireless in favor of the wireless router?

Can you think of any security issues that arise because of that?

[orangeblueorangeblue]

But why would it seem to be bypassing my modem's wireless in favor of the wireless router?

I'm a little confused by this, but I assume you mean you have both your LAN and wireless active in your Network Connections. If so, disconnect the LAN. I've seen before where having both active can cause one or the other to drop.

Control Panel -> Network and Internet -> Network Connections

Right click on your LAN connection and disable, leaving only your Wireless Network Connection.

[DieAGator]

Thanks for the help, I can see why you're confused.

All right, so I'm not actually using my LAN, just confused you with that. LAN is only engaged if I plug into the modem/router directly.

In Network Connections I'm using my Intel PRO Wireless software(?) to manage my connection and the gateway is my wireless router, identified by its product number. It's working pretty well and for whatever reason I have regained control of using Windows to connect or this Intel PRO Wireless software. For some reason I wasn't able to use Windows to connect and the connection wasn't stable. Now it's better so I'll keep going and tweak it a little more.

[DieAGator]

Have my connection fixed I believe. If the connection failed and I tried turn it to "standby" it wouldn't turn off and I would get this message:
The device driver for the 'Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection' device is preventing the machine from entering standby. Please close all applications. If problem persists you may need to update the driver

So I plugged that into Google and came up with pages like this:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/21841-42-connection-drop-intel-wireless-3945-mini-card

Apparently it's not that uncommon.

Went to Start-> Control Panel-> System-> Hardware Tab-> Device Manager-> Network adapters then to my Intel Wireless Connection-> Properties-> Advanced I could tap Power Management and move slide bar to Max.

Doing all that now means the power management system won't be disconnecting my wireless connection to save power, which it was doing even though my computer was plugged into an outlet. For the past hour my computer's been humming, no disconnects and seems to perform better overall.