patrickje's Full Review: Macmillan BlackICE Defender Full Version for PC (1...
BlackICE by Network ICE is firewall program. What a firewall does is block port access. TCP/IP (the dominant internet protocol) is a protocol that works with a combination of address and ports. So for example, your computer has an IP address of 192.168.1.1 (just an example) this address uniquely identifies your computer on the wide world of the internet. Ports (or services) allow many different programs to use the TCP/IP protocol on the same computer. Think of ports as mail slots, every time your computer gets a packet off of TCP/IP , it puts in the port number, and the appropriate program responds to that message.
What BlackICE does is intercept the putting of packets into the mailslots. It enables ports based on your security settings.
I got BlackICE because I am continuously on the Internet. I have never had a virus, and I never intend to. I also set up a home network, and with File Sharing and Print Sharing, my computer is especially vunerable.
So I tried two programs, Zone Alarm, and BlackICE.
Zone Alarm was not configurable enough for me, and I found the interface kind of clunky. Zone Alarms BIG plus is that it can block outgoing traffic. This specifically will block trojan viruses. Trojan viruses are programs that are running on YOUR computer, and communicating with someone on the Internet, presumably to allow that user control of your computer. The nice thing about trojans is that they have to be installed on your computer, so as long as you do not run unknown executables/scripts on your computer you are reasonably safe.
BlackICE does not block outgoing traffic. But BlackICE has a much nicer interface. I set it on Cautious. In addition, BlackICE is actually very configurable. The problem is that Network ICE makes it very difficult to configure BlackICE. The User Interface used to configure BlackICE is almost trivially simple. To really configure BlackICE, you have to understand the firewall.ini file in the BlackICE directory. There is ample documentation about the file on the Network ICE website, but there is no direct link to it, you have to search through the knowledge base for it. I have various programs (Gnutella, et. al.) that require specific ports to be open, and modifying firewall.ini is the only way without destroying the usefulness of a firewall.
The other problem is BlackICE is not 100% stable, 2 out of every 5 times I shutdown, some program called blackd will lock my computer up.
But the price $39.95, you are getting a pretty good return on your investment.
As for me using BlackICE in the future? No, unfortunately not. I have decided to buy a dedicated NT server box, and install Proxy Server on it. I have been using Proxy Server at work, and it is so much nicer than BlackICE.
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