Well, a Firewall's job is to stop unsolicited traffic to your computer. That is, a firewall stops communication attempts that start from outside of the
firewalled network. Windows firewall does this just as well as any other's. (In fact, a home router does this already, unless you deliberately disable
it--if you have an IP address like 192.168.xxx.xxx, that means you're in a private network, and pretty much guaranteed to be behind a firewall.
What these other products bring to the table is the ability to track the traffic leaving your computer--to catch malware trying to communicate out. Now, if
you're on (public, unsecured, WEP secured) Wi-Fi, pretty much anyone who wanted to who is also using the same Wi-Fi can snoop what you're doing on the
net. Best defense here is a VPN tunnel to a proxy (like Hotspot Shield, for example). For home Wi-Fi, WPA (and WPA2) security is the only one that really
protects your network from others 'wardriving' and using your network. Of course, they are only as strong as your password.
Oh, if you're at home, and using ethernet cables, or a WPA protected Wi-Fi, 3rd party firewalls can be rather overprotective to certain
applications--Scype, Bittorrent, Good old Fire Sharing, streaming media, etc. Rather like the security guards stopping (and detaining) the pizza delivery guy,
because they weren't informed he was coming.
firewalled network. Windows firewall does this just as well as any other's. (In fact, a home router does this already, unless you deliberately disable
it--if you have an IP address like 192.168.xxx.xxx, that means you're in a private network, and pretty much guaranteed to be behind a firewall.
What these other products bring to the table is the ability to track the traffic leaving your computer--to catch malware trying to communicate out. Now, if
you're on (public, unsecured, WEP secured) Wi-Fi, pretty much anyone who wanted to who is also using the same Wi-Fi can snoop what you're doing on the
net. Best defense here is a VPN tunnel to a proxy (like Hotspot Shield, for example). For home Wi-Fi, WPA (and WPA2) security is the only one that really
protects your network from others 'wardriving' and using your network. Of course, they are only as strong as your password.
Oh, if you're at home, and using ethernet cables, or a WPA protected Wi-Fi, 3rd party firewalls can be rather overprotective to certain
applications--Scype, Bittorrent, Good old Fire Sharing, streaming media, etc. Rather like the security guards stopping (and detaining) the pizza delivery guy,
because they weren't informed he was coming.