Lately, a lot of people have been telling me that firewall software behind a router (with a firewall) is extraneous and unnecessary. I am interested in TechSpot's thoughts on this. My initial reaction is that firewall software is valuable in alerting me to viruses on my PC trying to send information out. I'm not sure that a router would do this.

Does your router's firewall notify you of changes to your registry?
Does it ever warn you that a file may be malicious?

I don't know a whole lot about the firewall on my router but from my experiences - I will keep a firewall on my computer also.

Personally i use the firewall in my router and the Windows Firewall (Vista and never get any nasty infections, just a tracking cookie or two now and again.

I also have AVG Free, Spybot and Ad-aware SE (not 2007 version) as well but ditched Zone Alarm a while ago because when it was installed my pc literally wouldn't turn off Not without holding the power button, anyway

i have same setup except i couldn't get adaware to work with vista

That's a bit strange if you want me to email you the installer that i used PM me your email address and i'll be happy to

Thanks! Sent

Layered Security

Security is a layered solution; there's no single silver bullet that solves ALL issues.

A Router:

1. primarily provides NAT service to make your LAN systems inaccessible to the Internet
2. also provides port forwarding to support LAN based servers for public access (a contradiction to [1] by design)
3. *may* provide other services, eg: SPI, encryption

A Firewall:

1. implements rules to controll access based upon
   1. Source and Destination IP addresses
   2. direction of flow (in/out bound)
   3. protocol being used (IP,TCP,UDP,ICMP,IGMP)
   4. AND the port being accessed (the remote) or port being used (the local)
   5. may also implement SPI
2. SOME allow rules to be attached to specific application (eg: your browser may be controlled differently than your email client reader)

An Antivirus product:

1. scans files for infections and thus you have already been infected and need some remediation!
2. files include Programs (xyz.exe), config files (xyz.ini), and email contents
3. given ALL of the above layers being in places, you STILL get infections(##)

## WHY?
Because every connection to another system creates a path for both things you intend (eg: email, browser pages) and things hidden or unwanted (popups, trojans, virsus).

The best answer to your question is, YES you need ALL of the above

(Moderator edit: Posts merged. Please use the edit button, rather than replying to your previous post where there are no other replies in between. If bumping the thread, please wait at least 24 hours for a reply.

jobeard: yea, but the topics were very different any I was trying to be succinct and make direct answers

slow down here; the ROUTER is external to the system and therefore can not see the windows registry
The internal software firewall can implement this feature

Ah.. you can always count on the expert =)
Btw I think Blind Dragon's question was more of a rhetorical question.

Always wanted to know. Well put. Thanks.