computer question

[dweller]

after having installed zonealarm firewall, i find that i am being pinged continuously, from all over, every few seconds.
is this normal? and would this affect my connectability with sites?
just loading pages here takes forever at times, many disconnects (dialup)
many of the pings are coming from dialup connections also.
others will not show dns source.

at other times, i have no problem with connectivity, and can stay connected unlimited amount of time.

just curious, any suggestions welcome
dp

[TreasonousBastard]

1. Tough to tell.

Most of the "alerts" you get are normal background net traffic. Some are from your ISP.

If it's set up properly ZA shouldn't cause problems with pages loading or hangups, but there are so many other things, like the resources it uses, that affect things.

[dweller]

4. yeah, that's what i thought

some from isp, but they advised me to use a firewall, and the increasing number of dialups pinging me was what i was noticing.
i guess i was wondering if the constant pinging interrupted my attempts to connect with other sites taking up my resources, etc

thanks
dp

[trotsky]

2. Blaster and variants spread by pinging first.

Seriously, get yourself a hardware firewall. A lot more reliable and easier to use. I have the D-Link DI-604 myself, great little box. You won't get bothered by pings or anything else.

ON EDIT: Sorry, skipped over the part that you have a dial-up connection. Hardware firewall won't help you much there. Unless you get the DI-804 (I think that's the one) that has a built-in modem and can serve as a firewall / connection sharing server for a dial-up account.

[dweller]

3. thanks

everything is being blocked by zonealarm, i watched it occasionally when i first loaded it, and the pings weren't as numerous, but seems constant now. I'll look into the hardware.

dp

[Bossy Monkey]

5. The Internet has been ping-crazy for the last month or two

I think Nachi/Welchia (the one that ostensibly is trying to repair Lovesan/Blaster) is the big one generating these. Don't know if the pings are really slowing down the 'net or not. Nearly all of mine come from fellow Earthlink dialuppers; I doubt any are coming from the ISP itself. (Why would Earthlink use dialup to connect to Earthlink?)

The only important thing is to keep Microsoft Windows Update and your antivirus package's virus definitions current.

[dweller]

6. thanks, norton updated

and scanning done every other nite on schedule.

yes, the dialup ping is coming from detroit, philly, boston, la, chicago, miami, stamford (?) pretty much everywhere. and constant.

dp

[swinney]

7. Computer help me please

E-mail [e-mail]

When printing I get "Printer overload".Stops printing.

How do I reduce the load?

Also, I get "spool 32 has created an unknown error" and it cuts me off

[dweller]

9. do you have

other jobs pending in the queue? purge all jobs and check your connections too.
good luck

dp

[TXlib]

8. Do you have any file sharing software installed?

If so, that's one big reason.

[dweller]

10. not to my knowledge

an example would be?
edit: if you mean kazaa, gnutella, morpheus, chat, etc. No.

i can look for others.

i also recently loaded spybot, but that was more a help since it found some spyware.

dp

[radwriter0555]

11. totally normal. I get several thousands pings a month..

just forget it. the zonealarm works. good fun to hacktrace though, see who's trolling for your info.

[dweller]

12. okay, i'll try

mine are hitting around one every 5-10 seconds tho.
may check out the hacktrace sometime.
thanks
dp