Try Wireshark?

Post #329,598 by mvitale 7/14/10 8:08:45 AM Reply	Try Wireshark? It's a network sniffer program, if you're not familiar with it. It will listen on your ethernet (or wireless) card, and capture EVERYTHING about what's being downloaded. What you'd mostly be interested in (to start with) is the destination IP address (IE, where you're downloading this data from.) Once you have that, you can use "dig" or "nslookup" (which I could use on my Mac or Linux boxen...Not sure if they exist on Win2k) or some other tool to convert that IP address to a human-readable domain name (sometimes.) If it doesn't resolve to a domain name (or one that you readily recognize), follow up with us here.... -Mike "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin, 1759 Historical Review of Pennsylvania
Post #329,753 by Another Scott 7/17/10 10:02:24 AM Reply	Ok, I've captured some traffic. Now what? (This is on my T61 laptop with WinXP. Sorry if I said Win2k earlier.) I updated my FF plugins and the FF crash on startup seems to be gone. I've still got the 2020 plugin disabled. The mysterious ~ 200kB background download is still happening, but only when Firefox is running. I'm not seeing it with Chrome (which I'm using now). I installed Wireshark. It's neat. With FF running, I did Capture -> Interfaces -> Intel Pro Wireless -> Start and let it run from a few seconds. I don't know how to Analyze the stuff, but on sorting by the Source column I'm mainly getting stuff from: 12.4.198.133 174.129.88.133 174.37.113.144 204.9.177.195 204.9.178.11 - HTTP and TCP traffic (GIF 89a, content server, reassembled PDU, etc.) 64.207.133.176 - TCP segment of a reassembled PDU 64.215.158.100 - lots of mixed HTTP and TCP traffic 64.215.158.101 - TCP interleaved channel 546 bytes 64.215.158.102 - TCP interleaved channel 608 bytes 64.215.158.103 - TCP interleaved channel 608 bytes 64.215.158.108 - TCP interleaved channel 366 bytes 64.215.158.109 - TCP interleaved channel 639-641 bytes 64.215.158.111 - HTTP continuation or non-HTTP traffic 64.215.158.116 - TCP interleaved channel 1460 bytes 64.215.158.117 - TCP interleaved channel 606-641 bytes 64.215.158.94 - TCP interleaved channel 606-641 bytes 64.215.158.95 - TCP interleaved channel 1266 bytes Most of the packets seems to be coming from the 64.xxx servers, which seem to be GlobalCrossing boxes according to a web Whois. Now what? Could I have a hidden BitTorrent process going when FF is running, or something? I do have an old BitTorrent program installed on this box, but AFAIK it is not running and I haven't used it in years. I notice there's a BitTorrent 1.0.0.1 and BitTorrent DNA 1.0.0.1 plugin installed in FF (but AFAIK they've been there for years). Nothing other than FF shows up in the process list as being active when this is happening, and nothing shows up in FF's Downloads window (ctrl-j) but I haven't tried loading all of the same 73-some-odd tabs in Chrome yet. (I am concerned that I have 123 processes showing up in the process list and I don't know what 98% of them are...) What else can I do to figure out what is taking over my wireless bandwidth? Thanks very much. Cheers, Scott.
Post #329,754 by mvitale 7/17/10 10:18:05 AM 7/17/10 12:18:34 PM Reply	Re: Ok, I've captured some traffic. Now what? 12.4.198.133 - www.crutchfield.com 174.129.88.133 - ec2-174-129-88-133.compute-1.amazonaws.com 174.37.113.144 - kaching.cacetech.com 204.9.177.195 - ??unknown?? 204.9.178.11 - www.typepad.com 64.207.133.176 - skitch.com 64.215.158.100 - ??unknown?? 64.215.158.101 - ??unknown?? 64.215.158.102 - ??unknown?? 64.215.158.103 - ??unknown?? 64.215.158.108 - ??unknown?? 64.215.158.109 - ??unknown?? 64.215.158.111 - ??unknown?? 64.215.158.116 - ??unknown?? 64.215.158.117 - ??unknown?? 64.215.158.94 - ??unknown?? 64.215.158.95 - ??unknown?? I didn't do anything extensive to look those up, just nslookup/dig on my command-line. So, that said....There's a couple of things you can do. First, you could edit your (forgive me if it's not exact) c:\windows\system32\etc\hosts file to redirect any unknown-or-unwanted IP addresses to localhost, which is effectively making them go nowhere. Add lines to this etc\hosts file like so: 64.215.158.109 localhost 64.215.158.111 localhost One IP address per line, redirecting to localhost. I cannot say for sure if you need to "only" restart your browser each time you edit the file, or if you "completely" need to reboot in order for this to be effective. It's obviously your choice, but you could either do 'em one-at-a-time to narrow down which one is the offending IP address, or you could add-em-all-at-once and see if that cures your ills in one swell foop. Note that it's recommended that you also make a backup (before and after editing) of this hosts file. Put it, say, on your Desktop. If, after rebooting, you still have issues and go back to look at this etc\hosts file and it's altered from the state you left it in, you'll know you have problems. -Mike "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin, 1759 Historical Review of Pennsylvania Edited by mvitale July 17, 2010, 12:17:28 PM EDT Edited by mvitale July 17, 2010, 12:18:34 PM EDT Expand All History
Post #329,759 by Another Scott 7/17/10 11:43:36 AM Reply	Excellent. I should have rememberd that. Thanks.
Post #329,769 by folkert 7/17/10 2:20:16 PM Reply	Re: Excellent. I should have rememberd that. Thanks. doing a "wget" of the webserver on one of those IPs produces this: [Reference] Ref1=http://64.215.158.101/?MSWMExt=.asf Ref2=http://64.215.158.101:80/?MSWMExt=.asf I believe its a set of reflectors for a video stream. At least that is what it looks like to me. Porn site producers use them a lot... AS? What should we think now?
Post #329,771 by Another Scott 7/17/10 2:32:25 PM Reply	That shouldn't be it. ;-)
Post #329,796 by mvitale 7/17/10 10:03:33 PM Reply	Re: Excellent. I should have rememberd that. Thanks. Porn site producers use them a lot... AS? What should we think now? We should think that you know more about what porn sites do than AScott does. ;-) -Mike "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin, 1759 Historical Review of Pennsylvania
Post #329,806 by drook 7/18/10 9:22:33 AM Reply	Dang, beat me to it -- Drew

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