Hardware firewall or software firewall or both?

[Mr. Switch]

My motherboard (see sig) has a hardware firewall on it. However, I think it only works for traffic coming in and out of the Ethernet port, not my dial-up modem. I'm not too sure. I'm also upgrading to XP sometime this week and I read in earlier posts that it has a small firewall on it that only monitors incoming traffic. I also have Zone Alarm, which IÂ’ve used with Windows 2000 and IÂ’m sort of disappointed with it. Not only does it take forever to start up, but it also prompts me every time I try and run a new app and its really, Really annoying.

I'm also concerned about resources. So if I use the windows firewall and zone alarm together, how much of my resources am I going to eat up?

So I have a small dilemma: Use the Nvidia Firewall (if it works for modem traffic), Zone Alarm, WindowsXP firewall, or all three combined?

 

[Apokalipse]

the Windows firewall doesn't use much resources, and generally doesn't bother you much.
you won't even notice it running, unless a program wants to go to the internet for the first time, and it asks you if you want to block or unblock it.

but yeah, the Nvidia firewall is actually very good. much better than XP's firewall.
I think the Nvidia firewall does work for dial-up. it uses some software, so you can set it up.