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Pastimes : Computer Learning -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Siber who wrote (36148)	8/27/2003 12:53:09 PM
From: Rick Faurot	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110652

DSL is not a dedicated line in the way you are thinking of IMO. As a residential DSL user you are connected to a four port switch that you share with up to three other residential users. You may be the only one on your card, but you are still connected to the phone system. This is not particularly a negative if the DSL provider is on the ball and taking care of business. Maintenance and steady upgrades are vital to any system. DSL is not as vulnerable to performance impairment due to other sharing users, however. From what I have heard cable can go from lightning fast to 56k speeds depending on who is on your line at the time and what they are doing. On DSL you may see a slight reduction of speed when there is heavy usage but you will most likely not even notice it unless you run frequent speed tests. It is worth noting that DSL performance is a function of distance from the CO (Central Office). If you are closer than a mile, you will get excellent service. If you are farther than three miles, you won't be happy. There are other factors of course. You are likely to get lots of pings on DSL. The ISP pings you, their mail server pings you, their tech support people may ping you and the DSL provider may ping you from multiple departments. This is not a big deal and it is not a security problem. Since you have ZA, the pings don't get answered and no hacker could use a ping as a way to do anything to your computer. My advice is if you are in other respects happy with the cable co, forget about the pings. It's just maintenance activity and it is unlikely to affect your performance adversely. JMO.

To: Siber who wrote (36148)	8/27/2003 1:09:26 PM
From: mr.mark	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110652

"I'm being hammered by "ping" alerts on my Zonealarm...in excess of 500 an hour. This has been going on for several weeks and I've just about had it." your firewall is doing exactly what it is designed to do. why would that bother you "So, to thank them for giving me a straight answer (not!), I keep sending them the alert logs...I figure if I pester them long and hard, they might actually look into the problem." man are you ever barking up the wrong tree your firewall is stopping everything but instead of recognizing that fact you are sending "evidence" to a cable company and hoping they will somehow stop something that is happening WORLWIDE. a cable company can't stop computers from scanning the internet. and you're giving yourself fits by paying attention to all the "noise" that is being deflected. why don't you UNcheck the box that says Show alert when internet access is denied you'll feel a whole lot better

To: Siber who wrote (36148)	8/27/2003 1:17:39 PM
From: Gottfried	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110652

Siber, where in ZA do you see the ping alerts? I'm just curious because I don't see any in my alert log yet. But I just activated 'show ALL alerts' a few minutes ago. Before that I had it set to 'do not show informational alerts [program alerts only]'. I have comcast cable and a hardware router. Gottfried

To: Siber who wrote (36148)	8/27/2003 1:28:15 PM
From: lassic	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110652

<I'm being hammered by "ping" alerts on my Zonealarm...in excess of 500 an hour. This has been going on for several weeks and I've just about had it."> Same here, I'm running 2000pro and using roadrunner. I assume the pinging is part of the virus, because when I updated my mom's computer, she gets the same amount of pinging, but she's running 2000pro and MSN dailup. When I connect my cable modem at her house, I still get the same amount of pinging over roadrunner. Hopefully it dies down.