I just want you to know that I am sitting out here in and Extended stay inn
using a dial-up direct connection to the Internet. Before implementing
Analogx's IPsec Secpol rules for configuring IPsec to act in a firewall like
mannerism, BlackIce was sounding off and blocking unsolicited inbound
traffic. I have not been on a dial-up connection with a machine in several
years and was surprised at the number of probes, scans and attacks being ran
against the machine such as MS SQL Server, RPC, *NetBIOS*, etc, which BI was
blocking and logging and alerting on things such as O/S Fingerprinting. And
I have some vulnerable applications running such as IIS and SQL Server.

However, since implementing IPsec on the XP Pro machine and activating the
Analogx's SecPol rules with making adjustments in the rules like allowing
SMTP on TCP port 587, because EarthLink uses port 587 and not 25 and
configuring AnalogX's rules to block all the Windows Networking ports and
other ports IPsec protects by default such as TCP 135 only allowing traffic
in a LAN situation, BlackIce has not log anything in the logs, barked,
whined, or alerted with IPsec supplementing BI.

I was using BI and IPsec to supplement the no FW Linksys NAT router I was
using. But until now, I was not aware of how powerful of a solution IPsec is
and its ability to be used in a FW like manner to stop inbound or outbound
traffic by port, protocol or IP and nothing is coming past it *NOTHING*
which would make BlackIce react.

I am very impressed with IPsec and its ability to supplement in a FW like
manner. <g>

http://www.petri.co.il/block_ping_tr...with_ipsec.htm
http://www.analogx.com/contents/articles/ipsec.htm
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/813878

But just keep in mind I am not a guru like you are, and therefore, you can
kiss my *ASS* about IPsec and anything else for that matter with your
*tounge* hanging out. <vbg>