I remember the time of 56k modems. Port scans were fun back then. Sucked, would not dial-up again.
Host based firewalls: for some reason this sends the networking neckbeards into rage mode, god knows why. I'd say its slightly weaker than blocking everything on the router.
I worked in infosec for a while. Nearly every real-world threat we saw came in via HTTP, IMAP/POP3, or some other "pull" mechanism. Firewall might as well not have even been there. Anyone who thinks "firewall == security" is terribly out of date.
I'd say the only thing firewalls still provide protection against is pure remote vulnerabilities in common system services. Those still appear occasionally, but are more rare than they used to be. With better service isolation, coding standards, and authentication they'll become even rarer.