Got my WiFi firewall operational - perhaps just in time

Post #153,614 by dmarker 5/4/04 4:53:45 AM Reply	Got my WiFi firewall operational - perhaps just in time The sh** has hit the fan here in the news about Sasser The story on all the prime time news is of how Microsoft published a bulletin outlining a flaw in Windows & within days a virus had been written to exploit it. There is an implicit mssage that MS announced the weakness before adequately priming everyone to take precautions. I managed to get Big Pond Cable login to work from my D-Link DI-624 WiFi router. But what disturbs me a bit is the volume of packets appearing through the cable connection. To satisfy myself I turned my computer off but the traffic lights on the cable modem & the router still flash at a rapid rate. The BPC heartbeat is supposed to be a slow periodic 'ping' (I though the time period was 5 mins - that is what the write-ups on the heartbeat state). Will post a qery in BPCs forums. Some one is bound to know. It looks like classic port scanning to me. Doug M
Post #153,615 by Meerkat 5/4/04 5:11:48 AM Reply	Might pay to check whirlpool.net.au forums too Two out of three people wonder where the other one is.
Post #153,812 by dmarker 5/5/04 1:48:34 AM Reply	Thanks for the tip - did so & got answers ... One responder (seems to be a knowlegeable contributor) said that the constant flashing was normal for the Motorola SB5100 modem (I have either the 5100 or 5200). Tks Doug
Post #153,931 by dmarker 5/5/04 6:39:47 PM Reply	A valuable link from Whirlpool that answers the question ... Someome pointed me to this info from the cable modem maker ... >> Q. Why do the RD and TD lights on my modem flash, even when my computer is off? A. The flashing is caused by ARP (Address Resolution Protocol) packets sent out by the BPA routers. ARP is used to map the MAC address (which uniquely identifies your network card) to your IP address. The packets cost nothing (for users on volume plans) and do no harm. RD stands for 'receive data'; TD stands for 'transmit data'. << Doug M
Post #153,632 by inthane-chan 5/4/04 8:14:42 AM Reply	Even better... ...on NTBugTraq, there's a series of posts about how the patch which closes the hole Sasser is using causes problems (100% CPU utilization, constant crashing) with some NT installations. Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain. You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today. And then one day you find ten years have got behind you. No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.
Post #153,635 by dmarker 5/4/04 8:37:08 AM 5/4/04 8:38:11 AM Reply	The pc/activity light flashes like crazy with PC off By this I mean just with the router present & no PC - same rate for when PC direct to cable. But maybe it is normal. I am presently (while posting this) concurrently downloading approx 10 files of approx 100MB each & the aggregate download speed is over 450 K Bytes per sec. I knew cable could be fast but this sh**s on my former adsl for speed. The astounding part is that had adsl been available it would have cost me approx 40% more per month but the best speeds I ever got with adsl were an aggregate of about 120 K Bytes per sec. Was also greatly impressed with new 802.11a WiFi set up I have which could txfr a 500MB file in 3.5 mins - networking is getting damned fast. Cheers doug Edited by dmarker May 4, 2004, 08:38:11 AM EDT Expand All History
Post #153,637 by inthane-chan 5/4/04 8:46:28 AM Reply	Normal here. The amount of traffic coming inbound from worms these days is truly staggering. I wish it was hard to believe that there are that many ignorant idiots out there... Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain. You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today. And then one day you find ten years have got behind you. No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.

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