Top 5 Firewall

1) Sygate® Personal Firewall PRO
Before being discontinued by Symantec as a product, Sygate Personal Firewall software offered solid network protection, activity logging, and automatic email notifications. Free for personal use, it supported advanced configuration options without being overly difficult to use. The PRO edition (no longer available) includeed guaranteed VPN support, an unlimited number of security rules, ability to import/export settings to multiple computers, and one year of free upgrades.

2) ZoneAlarm™ Pro
Zone Labs provides a free ZoneAlarm download, too. The Pro edition adds email attachment protection similar to that offered by antivirus software, password protection, and ICS/NAT support. ZoneAlarm runs in Stealth Mode, making your PC literally "invisible" on the Internet. Though missing some of the more advanced personal firewall controls, its user interface includes handy features like the "Stop" button.

3) Symantec Norton Personal Firewall 2007
Some claim that Norton's graphic interface isn't as easy to use as some other products in this category. Symantec doesn't offer a free trial version of this personal firewall software product either. Still, it continues to improve, and a new Home Network Assistant feature simplifies administering security across the home LAN. The Norton Personal Firewall software is solid and from a reputable company.

4) Tiny Personal Firewall
A relative newcomer to the scene but now an established technology, the TINY Personal Firewall boasts low memory usage (small "footprint") on installed systems. It also contains an interesting time-based rule feature, where packet filters can be set to operate only at certain times of day. The U.S. Air Force chose this product as standard firewall software for its desktop computers. TINY Software provides a free personal version for home users.
Manufacturer's Site

5) McAfee Personal Firewall Plus
McAfee's software is sold on a one-year subscription basis rather than on one-time purchase, a feature that may appeal to some, but no free trial exists. McAfee also possesses a comparatively small footprint and a central "Control Panel" style of user interface. Product updates occur "live" over the Internet. McAfee does not support Windows ICS networks or the IIS Web server.

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Increase download speed of a BitTorrent client

Some users of the BitTorrent client report experiencing slow downloads when sharing P2P files. This is most likely to occur on computers behind a home router or software firewall.

Being behind firewalls, the BitTorrent client may block incoming Bit Torrent network connections. Given the load balancing and "swarming" nature of the BitTorrent network, clients unable to take incoming requests for uploads will naturally be allowed less bandwidth for downloads.

To solve this problem, consider the following:

• When a user starts a BitTorrent client, the client sets up a network resource called a "port" to allow other Bit Torrent clients to connect ot it. Each port possesses a unique number called the "TCP port number."
  
  
• A BitTorrent client normally associates the TCP port number 6881. However, if this port is busy for some reason, the client will instead try successively higher ports (6882, 6883, and so on up to a limit of 6999). In order for outside BitTorrent clients to reach this one, they must be able to connect to the correct port.
  
  
• When connecting to another BitTorrent client, the requesting client will first try port 6881, then 6882, and so on. However, if the computer is on a firewalled network, the incoming request may not reach these ports. On the other hand, if these requests succeed, the accepting client will be able to download faster.
  
  
• Firewalls can block nearly all of the ports used by P2P clients. To ensure the BitTorrent ports are made available to requesting clients, a home router or firewall can be manually configured to accept them. Most home routers possess a feature called "Port Range Forwarding" to do this. This feature allows the administer to tell the firewall where traffic for a given port number should be directed.
  
  
• For BitTorrent, many home users set up port forwarding on the TCP range 6881-6889. These ports must be directed to the computer running the BitTorrent client. If more than one computer on the network may run BitTorrent, a different range such as 6890-6899 or 6990-6999 can be used for each. Remember that BitTorrent uses ports in the 6881-6999 only.
  
  
• Many people don't realize that Windows XP computers include the built in Windows Firewall. If port forwarding is set up on a home router, but Windows Firewall is running on the BitTorrent client computer, incoming requests may still fail to reach the client. Ensure the Windows Firewall is either disabled or is set up to allow the appropriate BitTorrent ports to pass through. The same recommendation applies to other software firewalls.
  
  
• On home networks without a router, the software firewall (Windows Firewall, ZoneAlarm, or other) must be set up to provide the equivalent forwarding or pass-through capability as needed.

via computernetwork