Who's Talking !

[chris h]

Ever wondered why your data connection is roaring away when your neither downloading files/progs or waiting for pages to load?

Try this,

Start/Accessories/Command Prompt and at the cursor type NETSTAT

Up will pop a list of servers your computer is connected to, any you don’t recognise note down the ip address the 4 group number and use Sam Spade

http://www.samspade.org/ssw/

to identify them. It’s a handy way of ‘pruning’ your connections.

[DJ Dubovsky]

Hey, that's cool. I currently only have 2 showing. One is RP and I'm guessing the other is my mail server since that window is open as well. Nice to see I'm not being bombarded by random sites.
DJ

[chris h]

Ok DJ, you have to be careful with some of the connections, a friend killed all the live AOL links only to find they were her ICQ feed. I've pruned a couple of Microsoft connections in the past with no effect on the PC so whether they were supposed to be covert I don't know.

[Sanda]

Chris this is very interesting, I've been concerned for a while about all the requests for connection to the internet through Zone alarm. It's hard to tell what they are and I've found that some cause problems if I don't allow them but others seem to have no effect. Hopefully I'll be able to sort it out with this program. Thanks.

[jerry]

Hi Chris
Thanks for passing along this information..I have a cable modem and the data light flashes all the time..When hooked up to RP, netstat shows one pop server hookup..when not hooked up to RP, There are no server addresses listed..But the data light still flashes..Any idea what that might be..

Thanks
Jerry

[chris h]

Sanda I would firstly point out that every time your firewall announces a ping response dont assume its a hacker many servers just bounce data packets around on a purely benign basis. I f you have an ftp server on the go it constantly sends signals to keep the connection alive even if theres no data moving about so thats a possibility.

Jerry I dont have cable so I'm not sure perhaps other cable users on the site might toss in info. I know cable is always 'live' but perhaps the ISP sends check packets to test the connection.

[LactoBeeZor]

Jerry;

I have the same thing happening. The data light flashes randomly, even when no activity is happening and even when computer is not connected via software. My cable company says it happens to all their connects and cant really explain it. But I know no data is going through my router to the puter.

Ideas anyone??

[chris h]

Ghosts in the machine!!!