I waws wonderind what the are the differences between a firewall like zonealarm, blackice etc and the built in IP filtering option...

In IP filtering i basically tell it to not ACCEPT any TCP traffic from ANY port.

Isn't that basically what a firewall software does?

Isn't IP filtering or IPSEC does the same thing as a hardware firewall?

thanks

Hardware firewalls are much more secure...They use different protocols.