[Discuss] Little Snitch,tcpblock, other Mac OS TCP/IP cops?

[Richard Pieri]

On Apr 10, 2012, at 7:56 PM, Scott Ehrlich wrote:
> 
> The larger question is what other programs do people recommend for a
> network/firewall monitor for Mac OS?   I have Snow Leopard.

Two choices:

The first is the application firewall.  This is the firewall that you see in the Security preferences panel.  It is an application level firewall and it works even for background daemons like sshd and httpd.

The second is the BSD IPFW firewall.  This is the older firewall used by OS X 10.4 and earlier and it does still exist on Leopard and Snow Leopard and probably Lion as well but I haven't actually looked.  Everything that you can find about BSD IPFW holds true on OS X.  WaterRoof and NoobProof are two free front-ends to IPFW, the latter being a stripped down and simplified version of the former, similar to the old firewall rule editor.

http://www.hanynet.com/comparison.html

The application firewall and IPFW are not exclusive of each other.

--Rich P.