Sharing fine, but ping fails...?

[Kenneth]

[...]
So, though I hesitate to declare full victory, it does appear that
the problem is now resolved.

As before, please accept my sincere thanks for your skill, and your
generosity.

All the best,

Glad, the problem is resolved ! Thanks for the feedback.

Hi Madhur,

Given further experimentation, I think that I am going to replace my
router. I find that I am having problems similar to those we have
discussed, but this time, with another system.

My intuition is that there is something flaky in the router itself.

We shall see...

Thanks again,

If your test systems were connected to the network used previously and
if there is no problem with the router, I'll suggest you to go through
a spyware and adware scanner. I have seen some spywares causing the
symptoms you mentioned earlier.

Best of Luck

Hi Madhur,

I neglected to mention that I ran all of the adware/spyware drills on
all the systems regularly... They came up with nothing.

Also, other than trying another router, how might I know if the router
is all right?

Thanks,

 

[Kenneth]

[...]
So, though I hesitate to declare full victory, it does appear that
the problem is now resolved.

As before, please accept my sincere thanks for your skill, and your
generosity.

All the best,

Glad, the problem is resolved ! Thanks for the feedback.

Hi Madhur,

Given further experimentation, I think that I am going to replace my
router. I find that I am having problems similar to those we have
discussed, but this time, with another system.

My intuition is that there is something flaky in the router itself.

We shall see...

Thanks again,

If your test systems were connected to the network used previously and
if there is no problem with the router, I'll suggest you to go through
a spyware and adware scanner. I have seen some spywares causing the
symptoms you mentioned earlier.

Best of Luck

Hi Madhur,

An interesting development:

I continued to have the same difficulties, but with a different
system. That led me to believe that it was hardware related, but I now
think that to be false.

I had been running ZoneAlarm on each system. I had learned that
providing ZA with a range of Trusted IP addresses did not work
properly, and so, I entered as Trusted on each system's ZA the
specific IP addresses of all of the other systems.

I still had trouble.

I then started shutting down each of the Zone Alarms.

It has only been a few hours, but I have had no trouble whatever.

For now, it does appear that ZA was the villain...

All the best,

 

[Madhur Ahuja]

[...]
So, though I hesitate to declare full victory, it does appear that
the problem is now resolved.

As before, please accept my sincere thanks for your skill, and
your generosity.

All the best,

Glad, the problem is resolved ! Thanks for the feedback.

Hi Madhur,

Given further experimentation, I think that I am going to replace my
router. I find that I am having problems similar to those we have
discussed, but this time, with another system.

My intuition is that there is something flaky in the router itself.

We shall see...

Thanks again,

If your test systems were connected to the network used previously
and if there is no problem with the router, I'll suggest you to go
through a spyware and adware scanner. I have seen some spywares
causing the symptoms you mentioned earlier.

Best of Luck

Hi Madhur,

An interesting development:

I continued to have the same difficulties, but with a different
system. That led me to believe that it was hardware related, but I now
think that to be false.

I had been running ZoneAlarm on each system. I had learned that
providing ZA with a range of Trusted IP addresses did not work
properly, and so, I entered as Trusted on each system's ZA the
specific IP addresses of all of the other systems.

I still had trouble.

I then started shutting down each of the Zone Alarms.

It has only been a few hours, but I have had no trouble whatever.

For now, it does appear that ZA was the villain...

All the best,

Users had seen problems with the ZA even with disabled. The problems
have been solved by uninstalling ZA. But that doesnt means that it is
a bad product.

 

[Kenneth]

Users had seen problems with the ZA even with disabled. The problems
have been solved by uninstalling ZA. But that doesnt means that it is
a bad product.


--
Madhur Ahuja [madhur<underscore>ahuja<at>yahoo<dot>com]

Homepage
http://madhur.netfirms.com

Hi Madhur,

I found that my problems were solved by not running ZA. It is still on
the systems, just not launched. I have had no problems for the last 48
hours, and prior to closing the ZA's I was having browsing problems
perhaps five times per hour.

I have a Linksys router with its own hardware firewall. I had been
running ZA for additional protection.

Now, without ZA what would you suggest in my situation? In your
opinion, is the hardware firewall enough, or should I consider another
software firewall?

Sincere thanks for your comments,

 

[Madhur Ahuja]

Hi Madhur, [...]
I have a Linksys router with its own hardware firewall. I had been
running ZA for additional protection.

Now, without ZA what would you suggest in my situation? In your
opinion, is the hardware firewall enough, or should I consider another
software firewall?

I have really no practical experience with hardware firewalls or
routers [ just a student ]. IMO, though
the selection of firewall depends upon the type of enterprise you are
running. The best I can suggest you is to start a new thread, and also
crosspost to comp.security.firewalls. The people at this group, might be
able to help you better.

BTW, I use Winroute firewall(www.winroute.com)

Best of Luck

 

[Leythos]

I have a Linksys router with its own hardware firewall. I had been
running ZA for additional protection.

Now, without ZA what would you suggest in my situation? In your
opinion, is the hardware firewall enough, or should I consider another
software firewall?

You need to understand that the ROUTER is NOT a firewall, it's just a
router. It has no ability to determine the "Type" of traffic on any
port, only to forward the traffic. You can't setup a FTP forward and
restrict it to only FPT traffic, if you forward port 21, it will let
anything through as long as it's using port 21 - you could run a website
on port 21 and it would work. A firewall would block traffic that is not
of the proper type.

Your device will protect your home network quite well as long as you
have some basic methods in place:

1) Install Wall Watcher to log all in/out traffic and learn to
understand that traffic/logs

2) Don't forward anything from the internet to an internal system

3) Stop using Internet Explorer to browse the web with, download and use
FireFox - only use IE for bank sites if needed.

4) Stop using Outlook Express - get ThunderBird for email and Usenet (or
a real Usenet reader). Forte (what you are using, is good)

5) Install "Quality" anti-virus software on EVERY machine, make sure it
updates nightly, and keep it running. Norton AV 2004/2005 is very good
for home users.

6) Don't open ANY email that contains an attachment UNLESS you requested
the person to send it to you. Even if the email comes from a friend, if
you didn't ask them to send an attachment, delete the email without
opening it.

7) Download and install SpyBot Search and Destroy - www.safer-
networking.org and run it once a week or when you suspect something is
wrong.

8) Make sure that you install ALL Updates for any OS and MS Office
packages. Set automatic update to run every morning at 2AM and to
install the updates as needed.

If you do this, your ROUTER will keep you reasonably safe from anyone
outside your network, but please don't consider it a firewall.

 

[Kenneth]

You need to understand that the ROUTER is NOT a firewall, it's just a
router. It has no ability to determine the "Type" of traffic on any
port, only to forward the traffic. You can't setup a FTP forward and
restrict it to only FPT traffic, if you forward port 21, it will let
anything through as long as it's using port 21 - you could run a website
on port 21 and it would work. A firewall would block traffic that is not
of the proper type.

Your device will protect your home network quite well as long as you
have some basic methods in place:

1) Install Wall Watcher to log all in/out traffic and learn to
understand that traffic/logs

2) Don't forward anything from the internet to an internal system

3) Stop using Internet Explorer to browse the web with, download and use
FireFox - only use IE for bank sites if needed.

4) Stop using Outlook Express - get ThunderBird for email and Usenet (or
a real Usenet reader). Forte (what you are using, is good)

5) Install "Quality" anti-virus software on EVERY machine, make sure it
updates nightly, and keep it running. Norton AV 2004/2005 is very good
for home users.

6) Don't open ANY email that contains an attachment UNLESS you requested
the person to send it to you. Even if the email comes from a friend, if
you didn't ask them to send an attachment, delete the email without
opening it.

7) Download and install SpyBot Search and Destroy - www.safer-
networking.org and run it once a week or when you suspect something is
wrong.

8) Make sure that you install ALL Updates for any OS and MS Office
packages. Set automatic update to run every morning at 2AM and to
install the updates as needed.

If you do this, your ROUTER will keep you reasonably safe from anyone
outside your network, but please don't consider it a firewall.


--

Howdy,

I appreciate your comments above...

On the Linksys website, among other things about the specific router
(a WRT54G), it says:

"The Router protects your PC from most known Internet attacks with a
powerful Stateful Packet Inspection firewall."

Of course, I have little idea what that actually means, but that would
seem to indicate that there is some sort of firewall functionality
built in to the unit.

Can you assist me in understanding more about the extent and value of
that functionality?

Sincere thanks,

 

[Leythos]

On the Linksys website, among other things about the specific router
(a WRT54G), it says:

"The Router protects your PC from most known Internet attacks with a
powerful Stateful Packet Inspection firewall."

Of course, I have little idea what that actually means, but that would
seem to indicate that there is some sort of firewall functionality
built in to the unit.

Can you assist me in understanding more about the extent and value of
that functionality?

Sincere thanks,

Yes, what it means is that it makes sure that nothing rides IN on your
outbound connection. This means that when you browse to a site, since
it's a two-way thing, that only the actual system your PC is talking
with will be able to get back IN to your PC and not some other device
out there.

Linksys and many other vendors consider this to be a Firewall, but it's
just a property of NAT and the router.

In the sense of protection it should be enough for any home user. In
fact, before I purchase my firewall, I use a linksys BEFSR41 unit for
several years - but they called them ROUTERS back then. It wasn't until
later that, with NO MODIFICATIONS, that they started calling them
Firewalls.

 

[Kenneth]

Yes, what it means is that it makes sure that nothing rides IN on your
outbound connection. This means that when you browse to a site, since
it's a two-way thing, that only the actual system your PC is talking
with will be able to get back IN to your PC and not some other device
out there.

Linksys and many other vendors consider this to be a Firewall, but it's
just a property of NAT and the router.

In the sense of protection it should be enough for any home user. In
fact, before I purchase my firewall, I use a linksys BEFSR41 unit for
several years - but they called them ROUTERS back then. It wasn't until
later that, with NO MODIFICATIONS, that they started calling them
Firewalls.

--

Ah... makes sense. Now I understand.

Thanks,