I need some advice and recommendations.

[subcystence]

Since updating peerguardian's block/allow lists today, I find that my callwave service is blocked and that most of the opennap servers in winmx won't connect. I've also seen that some users don't even use peerguardian, or only use the winmx block and allow lists. I use the lists found at http://peerguardian.sourceforge.net/lists/ as well as the winmx ones. . . This is where I need advice:

I need to know
- if peerguardian is even at all necessary, and if so which lists I should use,
- a good firewall if needed, preferably free (I've seen sygate recommended)

Though I've always used winmx, occasionally I'll use bearshare if I can't find something on winmx, so I'm wondering what a good configuration with this stuff would be for that as well. I need some advice with all these things taken into account. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

[Me Here]

Hi subcystence,

Peer guardian is not needed, and as you have found they have recently added many p2p related items to thier block lists such as all the peer caches we use to connect, tons of primary users, opennap servers and even more small ISPs they dont like.  For what reason you ask?  We dont know and appearently neither do they.

A good firewall, yes Sygate works great, I even like the XP one if you have a good antivirus installed.  Kerio is ok, I dont personally like Zone Alarm but many folks do fine with that.  Sygate and XP are the two easiest most user friendly to configure.. but if your a bit experienced then Zone Alarm or Kerio might do you better.  Best to have a look around.

Hope this helps if you have further questions just ask away...

[KM]

the other block lists are useless, have a look through the lists yourself, all they contain are things like churches (major threat there!) and the closest they come to blocking anything anti-p2p are blocking every single government office like local mayer etc (who btw don't give a damn about p2p use, except perhaps their own use to download porn at work) - their lists for example do not contain ANY macrovision entries except those they copy/pasted from us, however they do block a lot of random users who are potential download sources, as well as blocking any servers they can find that have anything to do with a p2p network (basically they are out to stop you being able to use p2p)...

the best thing to do is remove peer guardian, it is a waste of time, if you're using the winmxgroup patch then you are blocking all of those who are attacking winmx, if you're not then well you aren't (even with peer guardian) so you should install the patch

as for firewalls, whatever you are using now? and if you're not using one, well you've just proven the fact that you don't need one - heh (personally i never use firewalls, the sole purpose of firewalls is to block traffic... i'll stick to having my traffic not blocked thank you)

[subcystence]

Thanks, Me Here and KM! This helps me a lot. I'm set with winmx, anyway. Sometimes but rarely I'll have to jump to bearshare if there's something I really must find that I can't on winmx. Since I'm unsure of my safety I choose not to share on bearshare, unfortunately, for the time being. But as I said, it's pretty rare that I even use it, but I'd like to feel safe enough to share and so that I'm not leeching. Do you have any suggestions for this? I hope this isn't the wrong place to ask but I'm giving it a shot anyway. Thanks.

[KM]

"safe"? just share away, i do... all those others you are downloading from do... the only "dangers" there are on p2p networks are the dangers of downloading a virus or something