Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with network and internet

Software to monitor network activity AND which program is active?

gnossos — Wed, 22 May 2013 08:59:17 -0800

I am looking for some software (cheap, free) that will tell me which program is currently accessing the net AND how much traffic is being transferred. I have found lots of software that will tell me which port is in use, or which port is assigned to a certain program on my computer, but I can find no software that will tell me which program on my computer is currently transferring files to and from the net and the current transfer rates.

I am using Win7 on both 32 bit and 64 bit machines.

Can anyone help?

Thanks.

Gnossos

Use of The City as a metaphor for the Internet/Web

0bvious — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 09:19:31 -0800

I am looking for examinations of the Internet and World Wide Web that use the structure and/or history of the city as a metaphor. I'm afraid I have no original example of this phenomenon to kick things off. I have this image in my head of 'the city' that always goes back to Plato and his Republic. Plato's city was a physical, social construction, as well as a philosophical metaphor, at one and the same time. It feels that many have talked about the Internet in similar, overlapping, terms.

(It need not be 'the city as metaphor', rather any social, physical space that humans build and live in will suffice. Also, metonymy rather than metaphor would be great.)

Writings that explore the political history of the city, it's technological expansion, that consider the city as a nexus for theories of human civilisation, of emergence perhaps, of structure, social and political control and, perhaps most importantly, of space vs place - all as a way to think about similar phenomena taking place online. The Internet as emerging network with similarities to the city; the World Wide Web considered as spatio-social metaphor?

etc. etc.

Any ideas?

Changed ISP unable to send email with e-mail account of old ISP

conrad101 — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 19:35:04 -0800

I have a friend who has become totally reliant on an e-mail account, which was provided by an internet service provider which she has just left to go to a new ISP. She uses Outlook 2003 as her e-mail client program. Unfortunately, she is now finding that after moving to this new ISP that although she can receive e-mails absolutely fine, she cannot send e-mails. Her old ISP was talktalk.net and she has become dependent on the e-mail account provided by this ISP. However, after connecting her computer to her new ISP's intenet connection, which is BT internet; it has become apparent that her e-mail client: Outlook 2003, can receive but not send e-mails. The error message on attempting to send e-mails as shown by Outlook 2003 is:

"Send test email message: Outlook could not logon to the outgoing mail server (SMTP). The problem could be the server name, your server may require authentication, or your server may not support SSL. Verify authentication and SSL options under more settings."

I have tried changing the SMTP address in outlook 2003 with tools > email accounts > view or change e-mail accounts> change> from: smtp.talktalk.net to btinternet.com, without any change in outcome. Any suggestions as to what I should do next? Many thanks!

Internet, you're being weird. Stop it.

Rhaomi — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 18:01:41 -0800

Trying to set up a new wireless network and running into all kinds of strange problems. Connections dropped every few hours! Some machines work, some don't! Can connect to internet, can't connect to router! DOGS AND CATS LIVING TOGETHER (literally). Please help. The set-up is a little convoluted, but does work (until it doesn't).

The original router is an ISP-provided 2wire HomePortal 1700HW, a combination DSL modem/router that plugs directly into a phone jack and broadcasts it as a WiFi network. It's a few years old but has worked decently on its own up to this point, so I don't think the problem lies there.

The newcomer is a brand-new Western Digital My Net N600 router, acquired both to improve on the range of the old one and to provide networked storage capability for shared music and such.

Configuring the two of them to work properly was a bit of a dog, but I finally did get it working. The phone jack plugs into the old 2wire, now set to bridge mode to disable its built-in wireless capability. The 2wire plugs into the N600 via Ethernet. And the N600, armed with all the correct PPPoE login information from the ISP, correctly connects to and interprets the DSL coming in from the 2wire and broadcasts it out. Even the network storage works!

Problem is, every couple of hours this connection fails, and in the weirdest way possible.

Right now, I'm typing this on an old 'n' busted laptop running Windows XP. It's currently connected to the N600's wireless network and can browse the web no problem. All the status lights on the routers are green, running an ipconfig command returns normal IP address information (including the router's IP), I can ping the router at that location fine.

But I can't connect to the router's settings page (192.168.1.1). WTF?

Also, a visiting Chromebook can connect to the network but can't load any websites... except for AOL webmail, of all things. A test email sent from a phone showed up in the inbox fine, while Google, Facebook, etc. look dead. Not even Gmail, mail.live.com, or even just plain old aol.com work -- just mail.aol.com. This Chromebook doesn't have a data connection, btw, just WiFi. I say again: WTF?

Meanwhile, a newer Windows 7 laptop can't connect to the N600 network at all ("Unable to connect..."), and even plugging directly into the N600 router via Ethernet won't work -- I can ping it fine, but neither websites nor the router settings page itself will load.

Various mobile devices are likewise denied -- various iPhones and iPads can't connect to the network at all.

Power-cycling the N600 router solves all these problems and things work alright for all devices... for a few hours. Until everything craps out again, for no apparent reason.

What could be triggering this issue, and how do I fix it? I've dealt with wonky router stuff before, but it seems totally bizarre to me that:

- the status lights on both routers are fine, including the N600's "internet connection OK" light
- ONE laptop can connect to the router's WiFi and browse the web, and can ping the router, but can't access the router itself
- the other laptop can ping the router through a wired connection, but can't access the router settings or browse the web that way
- a Chromebook can connect to the network and can load *one* website (mail.aol.com), but nothing else
- no other device (apart from that first laptop that mysteriously works fine) can connect to the WiFi network at all

Any thoughts or advice appreciated; I'd love to get this problem fixed rather than have to venture back to Best Buy and try to find a replacement (maybe an N900? who knows).

Monitoring network usage with multiple SSIDs

rhapsodie — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 14:50:59 -0800

Please help me solve my router management issues. At my house I want multiple SSIDs (at least two), AND the ability to monitor network traffic by device or by SSID. My house consists of two adults, one teenager, and approximately 11 devices that connect to the internet through our wireless router. We currently use an Encore ENHWI router which allows us multiple SSIDs so we can turn off the teenager's internet as necessary. Our ISP limits our bandwidth, and there are days when our bandwidth goes over 10gb. I want to be able to monitor which device or which SSID is the main bandwidth culprit.

I've seen previous questions about monitoring traffic, but those solutions (Tomato firmware and DD-WRT) don't support tracking on multiple SSIDs. Our main computers all run Windows 7, and I'd rather not buy a $300 router.

Any recommendations for a book on history of computer security?

cman — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 13:18:16 -0800

I'm looking for a book recommendation on the history of computer and internet security. I had the opportunity to take a class called Network Security and I only went to the first day because there was no way I would be able to keep up with all my work. But on that day the professor went quickly over a timeline of network security history, talking briefly about honey pots, warez, NIDS, p2p, DoS attacks, porn, and so many more interesting topics that I wish I had time to absorb. I'm looking for a book that covers this history, hopefully accessible to an engineer-yet-not-a-CS-nerd like myself. Any recommendations?

Looking for blog and podcast networks

reenum — Wed, 16 May 2012 18:09:40 -0800

Looking for blog and podcast networks. I really like it when a group of sites is in a network and is able to tie a disparate amount of content together. Same with podcast networks.

I'm talking about groups like Gawker Media, The Awl Network, Ace
Broadcasting, and the Nerdist Network. It doesn't matter how big or small these are, just as long as they are a "network".

Thanks!

How to create a wireless network that uses another wireless network for internet access?

jsturgill — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 11:05:36 -0800

Network configuration question: I have a desktop with a wifi card, a wireless router, and an external wireless connection I have access to. I want to connect the desktop to the external wireless connection, then connect the wireless router to the desktop, creating a second wireless network with internet access. Desktop (D)
Existing Wireless Network (E)
Wireless Router (R)
New Wireless Network (N)

D connects to E via wifi.
D connects to R as the gateway directly via an ethernet cable.
N is configured such that connecting to N grants internet access via D & E.

The reason for this madness is that I live too far away from E to access it from everywhere in my portion of the house. I hope to basically extend the range of E by leveraging the fact that my desktop doesn't move, and does get good reception, without having to buy new hardware.

The desktop is running Windows 7. The wireless router R is a DIR-825.

New wireless router help needed.

Jackie_Treehorn — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 07:49:26 -0800

Please help me find the best wireless, simultaneous g/n router that also functions as a print server natively or using Tomato or DD-WRT. More inside--> Hello everyone.

I'm looking to upgrade from my current Linksys/Cisco WRT54G2 router that is running DD-WRT firmware.

I'd like to bump up to a wireless N router that will simultaneously support devices that run G and N. Additionally, I want to relocate a USB printer to my router location so it must also function as a print server. The router can do this natively or using an alternative firmware like Tomato or DD-WRT.

In researching a new wireless router, my brain has turned to mush. I'm really having a hard time understanding the differences between dual band, simultaneous band, ect. That makes it really hard for me to find the router I need.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. I really appreciate your time.

Uncertainty about interpreting messages from Little Snitch

Mummy of a Lady Named Jemutesonekh — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 13:21:16 -0800

OSX security question from a total noob, involving uncertainty about interpreting messages from Little Snitch. The Little Snitch Network Monitor was telling me that nmblookup, smbclient, and mDNSResponder were connecting to Malefirstname-PC.local, Malefirstname-iPad.local, and malefirstname-ipad.local. Just noticed this for the first time when I woke my computer from sleep 15 minutes ago -- I moused over the Network Monitor because it seemed like there was a lot of activity on there. As I started up Firefox and tried to figure out the significance of this, the connections kept occurring at not-incredibly-distant intervals until I blocked them through Little Snitch.

There are two other people who use my network, a girl and a boy. I don't know the latter's name and he just started using the network a couple weeks ago; I figure this could be his stuff, although I wonder why I wouldn't have noticed it before on Network Monitor (could just be that I don't look at Network Monitor too often -- is there a way to view Network Monitor logs?).

Anyway, just wondering whether this seems normal, or whether I have something to be worried about. Sorry if I've been vague or left out important details, will be happy to post clarification/more info as needed.

Have I pruned my facebook friend list too much?

lankford — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 18:36:49 -0800

I've pruned my facebook friends list quite a bit. Am I going overboard or should I "refriend" some back? At this point, I mainly keep facebook active so that I can be somewhere accessable. I've defriended a sizable portion of my facebook friends as of late. The reasons include:

-General inactivity with said friend, unlikely to speak with/see on a regular basis again.
-Using feed to post things on religion/politics that I am uncomfortable with (I am fairly liberal)
-Bragging on much of their status updates
-(for some high school friends) Wasn't friends with all that closely IRL, or they were enablers/thought of me only as one-dimensional roles I long grew out of.
-People with "inflated" friend counts (kinda a tiebreaker if they have been inactive with me)

And probably others. Plus I have been into minimizing my belongings more than ever. I'm also at the point where I don't do status updates of my own.

I'd like to keep facebook and make it into a small, positive aspect of my life. And I'm in the quarterlife stage where I am having struggles with my social life (let's not focus on that, it's just a point). Should I just add/readd anyone who I like and am on decent terms with, even if the odds of reconnecting on a regular/IRL basis are slim (and do more news feed hiding)? Maybe there's a networking possibility or such out there. I almost wish I had a "fan page" and "personal page".

And if I do refriend, I'm tempted to do the "add a personal message" so that I'm not blindly readded just to build someone's count. Probably other layers to peel, but let's focus on the site.

What is chatting?

patrad — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 20:42:56 -0800

How can I figure out what is chatting and/or stealing my home LAN bandwidth? So sometimes my LAN lags . . I want to know if I have network bottlenecks, if my DSL sucks, if my neighbor is stealing bandwidth . . if something on net is killing the network, etc. . . if AT&T needs to go. .

Here is my home network. For the most part I try and hard wire everything.

Office computer (which I'm typically on a ton as I work from home)
Home computer (which typically the wife uses to surf)
HTPC computer (also serves as the NAS and Squeezecenter server)
Netbook for couch surfing - not typically on
Neighbor's laptop
2 iPhones
1 Android
3 Squeezeboxes and 1 controller
HP attached printer

The only wireless devices are the phones, netbook and 1 squeezebox. Everything else is wired via a gig DLINK switch and a D-link DIR-655.

When I have issues I typically shutdown anything I know may be killing it, Pandora, etc. . I limit backups to NAS and BT until the wee hours.

My suspicions are neighbor streaming netflix or AT&T DSL just plain sucking but I want to confirm.

I've played with Wireshark, and I'm sure it can tell me, but I can't get it to make much sense or give me reports.

I would like to see traffic by client . . internal and outbound. . anything simple out there I have not found?

How can I benchmark and measure cloud computing latency?

conrad101 — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 14:40:17 -0800

I am looking to do a project on the effects of latency on cloud computing, specifically latency impacting on Amazon EC2 virtual machines and I am trying to get my head around it. EC2 is an Infrastructure As A Service cloud product. Unfortunately, I do not have much experience with it. I haven't found alot on the internet on this area; has anyone seen any information on this subject? Could anyone make suggestions about appropriate ways to do latency benchmarking in this area. What kind of things ought I be looking to include in any benchmark tests. How exactly do others go about measuring latency for Amazon EC2. Are there any software tools out there which will help.

Which of thailand's cellular companies offer The highest mobile speed?

omaralarifi — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 09:48:39 -0800

Which of Thailand's cellular companies offer The highest mobile 3g or 4g or whatever tech speed with unlimited plan in Bangkok area. And how much does it cost. Whether it is a USB or 3G or 4g SIM card.

You mean I can just BUY a bigger pipe?

Tehhund — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 16:52:32 -0800

Is my wireless router's tube clogged? The basic question is whether buying a new router will allow me to use all of the internet bandwidth available to me, or if I need another solution. Details:

I just got Comcast 10 Mbps service installed. To test things out, I connected my desktop computer directly to the cable modem and hit up speedtest.net. The results surprised me - a consistent 20 Mbps download (and 3 Mbps up, but upload speed isn’t a big deal to me). Then I broke out the little D-Link DI-524 that has been a trustworthy pal for years. Once I connected the desktop to the router, I ran speedtest.net from the desktop again, and my results were consistently 15 Mbps. I turned off the router's wireless signal so the desktop was the only computer connected to the router (and therefore the only computer connected to the modem) and consistantly got the same results - 15 Mbps when I go through the router vs. 20 when connected straight to the modem.

It doesn't look like a problem with ethernet cables - I'm using the same cable to connect the router's WAN port to the modem and the computer directly to the modem, and I've tried using several cables to connect my PC to a variety of ports on the router, all with the same result. As far as I can tell, going through my little router is limiting my download bandwidth to about 15 Mbps, even though Googling indicates that the WAN ethernet port on my router is 100 Mbps ethernet.

Even though I was plodding along with a 4 Mbps connection last week and am only paying for 10 Mbps service, I want that extra 5 Mbps! Nay, I am ENTITLED to that additional 5 Mbps!

So here are my questions in detail:
1. Is it true that the DI-524 is slowing me down? Or am I overlooking other, more likely explanations?
2. Is there anything I can do to my DI-524 router to speed it up, or is it forever limited to 15 Mbps downloads?
3. If I can’t speed up my router, my plan is to just buy a cheap router that supports a 100 Mbps WAN connection, disable DHCP on my DI-524 to use it as a switch/hub, and hope that the cheap new router can actually handle the advertised 100 Mbps WAN connection. That should work, right?
(I’m eyeing an upgrade to a 802.11n wireless router with gigabit ethernet so I can do fun things with my home network, but I’d like to know whether the cheap wired router option would work for now).

Unclog the tubes!

cognitio — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 17:53:27 -0800

I live in a student co-op with 17 people, and i have unofficially become the person in charge of improving the internet for our house. I'm looking for advice on how to optimize our setup. Technical details lie within. For daily usage our speeds have always been usable, but nothing great. I am looking into switching ISPs and getting a faster service, but our options are pretty limited and I was hoping to get some tips on optimizing setup in our house (specifically the wifi setup) to make the most use of what we have.

The current setup:
We currently have DSL service with Speakeasy that is quoted at 3-6 Mb/s download speeds. Our DSL modem sits in the basement (of a 2 story house) and is connected to the WAN port of an Airlink 300N wireless router. Being in the basement however, this router is almost never used for wireless access. One of the LAN ports from this router connects to our house server box, the second connects to a D-Link 24 port Gigabit Switch that then runs CAT-5 cables through the walls to all the rooms in the house, and the last two ports connect to CAT-5 cables that run up to the first and second floors to two Linksys WRT54GS routers (running DD-WRT) that serve as our primary wireless access points for the house. Both of these routers have their WAN connection disabled and are set as DHCP forwarders to the main router downstairs.

To my knowledge, very few people connect to the to the hard wired connections in their rooms, and most people just use the wifi from the two linksys routers. The problem is that the typical speeds i measure while connected to the wifi (in the same room as the router) are about 1Mb/s download. By connecting via ethernet cable to one of the linksys routers or one of the room connections I can usually measure speeds between 3-5 Mb/s depending on who else is connected.

I know that wifi is always going to be slower than an ethernet connection, but i feel like under optimal conditions i should be able to get some better speeds than i have been getting. Also, the whole setup has really been cobbled together over the years, and I'm not sure if it is the most effective hardware configuration. If you have any advice on setting i should tweak on the routers, some hardware upgrades (probably within the range of a few hundred dollars) that would go a long way, or any other way i can get some more juice out of our network, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Just email them already. Jeez.

dozo — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 09:56:33 -0800

Looking for a PDF printer (or similar file printer) that can be used to print from remote locations. A client of mine (small doctor's office) gets referrals from another organization (BigMed). BigMed prints these referrals to my client's network printer from over the internet (printer has local IP, the router forwards the port to the IP). This is causing a work flow issue; my client has to turn around and rescan the printed referral into their patient file (BigMed says all their partners work this way). Client wants a PDF printer installed on their server so that BigMed can just print to a shared directory for easier attaching to the patient files, which seems simple and straight forward.

I'm running into problems finding a PDF printer that will do the job. The issue is that the printer will need an IP for the port to be forwarded to, and I haven't found one that will do this. I've checked out PDFcreator, but it's only accessible to the local network and doesn't get an IP.

Can anyone else think of a way to make this work? Apparently this is the first time BigMed has even had this request and is at a loss for a way to make it work. BigMed won't email the referrals, BTW.

Does my WRT54G hate Godaddy Hosted websites?

edman — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 15:56:02 -0800

I am having connectivity issues with Time Warner, WRT54G and Godaddy hosting , but exclusively to godaddy hosted sites. This is a pretty specific connection issue i hope someone can help me with. I have Time Warner Broadband service at home connected to a Linksys WRT54G Router, and its been working flawlessly for over 6-7 years. For some reason, this past week, i have been unable to reach ANY godaddy hosted websites, but have been able to reach any other site i can think of, and i know those sites are up, since they are accessible by everybody else:

http://www.etropa.com
http://www.unify.org
http://proxygaming.com

(three different hosting plans from godaddy) You probably can reach them ok.

Ive done the resetting of the router, i even updated my firmware to a custom firmware out of desperation (Tomato V1.28) and everything works, except connecting to the godaddy websites. So total router reset, NVRAM reset doesnt clear up the problem.

Name resolves to ip, I cant ping, i cant connect to them via FTP, traceroute fails after the 14th hop or so, again, just to those godaddy sites.

The odd thing is that if i connect my PC directly to the cable modem, websites pull up fine, so it would seem to be something on the router is preventing me from connecting to those sites.

(I tried fiddling with the MTU, but not sure if thats the culprit)

Godaddy and my ISP shrugs and says must be my router.

Any network techs/gurus can give me some/any pointers? Ive been banging my head on this issue for the past few days, and my forehead is pretty flattened at this point. Can a router 'go bad?' just to godaddy?

Help me be in charge of my network!

reductiondesign — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 10:38:36 -0800

Wireless router questions: monitoring traffic and custom firmware. I'm running a Belkin wireless router at home (dual-band; don't know the model number offhand) and as the person in charge of the internet bill and the home network, I'd like to put myself more in charge of things.

1. How can I monitor what people are doing on the network? i.e. If there's a friend of a friend using my network, I'd like to know what they're up to. (I'm more interested in "They were on Facebook" rather than "Great, now I have their login information!" Just a general idea is more than enough.)

I don't want to debate the ethics of this, thanks.

2. I've read that setting up custom firmware can make my router more secure, but secure from what? How do I make custom firmware? What else should I know to be the Ultimate Network Hero? (For this step, please act as if I'm clueless about how routers work.)

Thanks, MeFi!

How can we fight against the "1984" version of the internet?

simpleblob — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 10:51:00 -0800

Since every government in the world seeks information control to remain in power. The internet will eventually be tapped, censored, crippled, and/or blocked by every country. How can we fight against this, or rather, route around it? Is there another way besides voting against it, which from what I see is not working.

- Setting up a Darknet mesh network?
- Buying telcos -- converting them to non-profit/mutual?

Anyone knowledgeable please share your thoughts, greatly appreciated.

Create Hotspot Forced Homepage

allfortheBoss — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 08:53:46 -0800

How do I create a forced splash-page or homepage for people using my WiFi hotspot? I work at a small tech-focused school. We have WiFi school-wide and are trying to make its usage for research easier and more school oriented. What we want it that when a student (or anyone for that matter) is using our WiFi and opens a browser to surf the web, he/she would be greeted by our custom homepage with research links, school information and library search, similar to the way when one logs on to a coffee house hotspot he/she would be greeted with the coffee house's homepage...

Any suggestions?

Is media causing my computer to die?

isnotchicago — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:36:46 -0800

Media playback seems to be killing my computer. And my wireless router. And my modem. How is this possible? This is strange. There was weirdness going on with my (6-months-old) PC as of about two weeks ago, and tonight it got worse.

### The past two weeks:

After being online for some time, media I am playing (e.g., music or movies, I've noticed it with both) begins to stutter, and then my connection to my router drops, and I am unable to reconnect. I have been able to connect to another open network and never have this problem. It only happens with my router/modem.

Additionally, my computer will sometimes disconnect from this other open network (but without the weird media playback glitchiness), and then Windows will report "No connections are available", despite the fact that there are a dozen or so networks in the area that usually show. A minute or so later, the networks will all show again, and I can then reconnect to this other open network. (Still unable to connect to my own network.)

Things I tried to no avail:
A new wireless adapter
Resetting my router to factory defaults
A new router
A new modem
My roommate's iMac (dunno if this is the case, but it seems that he also loses the connection indefinitely once my computer kills it)

### Tonight:

ABout an hour after I boot up the computer, I was in the middle of playing a video on YouTube when the computer froze and a long "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" sound emanated from the speakers (as if the audio got stuck on a single note). I powered down the computer and restarted. Two hours later, while listening to a song in WinAmp, the computer froze again and the same single sound played from the speakers (maybe it was different, but it sounded similar). I have currently been on the computer again for about three hours (avoiding doing anything besides talking on AIM) without a problem.

### Yeahbuhwha?

The common denominator is media playback, but I haven't changed any drivers recently so I don't know why it would break now. The only software I have installed recently is Adobe Catalyst beta. Not knowing if that was somehow causing issues, I uninstalled it, but continued to have the network problems.

I am using Windows 7, Core i7 720 CPU (stock speed), 6 GB RAM, ATI Radeon 4890, Linksys WRT160N router, some no name wireless card running Ralink drivers, and a Scientific Atlanta modem from Comcast.

Very frustrating, oddball SSH/network problem

nitsuj — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 10:54:56 -0800

Very frustrating, oddball SSH/network problem. Let's take it inside: There's one server in particular that I access via SSH. I also occasionally access that server via https.

Last week, I went out of town, and after that I could no longer access that server. I figured it was because I was out of town or whatever, but when I returned home, the problem was still there.

Here are some facts about the situation:

1. Macbook Pro, 10.5.8
2. When I SSH, I get "Connection refused."
3. I can access the server via https with no problem.
4. When I ping the server from terminal, I get "no route to host."
5. I can SSH into other servers from this computer with no problem.
6. I can SSH into the server from other computers on my same network. (Same router, modem, etc.)

#5 and #6 tells me that it's a problem with this computer specifically -- not the server, or my home network. But what?

I have, of course, rebooted, but I'm at a loss as to what would be causing the problem with my connection to this server, from this computer, specifically.

Ideas?

How much PC security will I really need?

woot — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 03:29:48 -0800

I'm about to receive a desktop computer (Windows 7 Pro) that I am going to use *solely* for playing an online game. Do I need any additional security or virus protection programs aside from what comes with Windows 7? I'm a Mac person and fairly comfortable with managing security for my network with MacOS, but I'm not very familiar with PC security aside from OMG YOUR COMPUTER WILL BE PROBED AND INFECTED WITHIN 2 MINUTES OF GOING ONLINE THE FIRST TIME!!!111

This is going to be a dedicated gaming rig, initially for LoTRO. I plan to be pretty careful -- I won't put any "personal" info on the machine at all: no email accounts, no documents, no web browsing aside from what I need to do to get software updates. The PC will be connected to a network with other Macs, though, and depending how I set things up, may have to join over a wireless network with WPA. I might also install other game apps (such as WoW with authenticator) in the future.

My specific questions are these (but please tell me what I'm missing):

1) Is the Windows 7 built-in firewall sufficient to protect the computer from bad things (assuming fairly good security discipline practices)?
2) I *will* have to run a browser for Windows and game software updates -- is cranking IE's security settings to the max enough?
3) Do I need to change any settings on my Time Capsule wireless router?
4) Do I need to change any settings on my other Macs to protect my them?
5) Should I set up a special segregated network for this PC so that it can't see or get to the other Macs? (Bonus points if you can find me instructions.)

Please forgive me if I sound a little paranoid, but I just don't want to be that person who comes home one day to find her network merrily hawking herb@l V1@gr4.

All sorts of WiFi connectivity issues. I think it's my router.

aquanet — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:45:53 -0800

After 4 months of smooth sailing, my WiFi has started acting up and (first temperamental page loading; then lock icon disappears when connecting to my secure network; now work computer won't connect at all). Is it my ISP, router, computer, or something else? I bought a new router when I moved into my apartment last August. It's a Belkin Wireless G; Time Warner Cable supplies my service; and my computer is a MacBook running 10.5.8. Setting everything up back then was a breeze, and I never had any WiFi troubles. Things started going awry on January 1st, and I've been in various circles of Hell ever since.

For the first two or three weeks in January, I started having a problem almost exactly like the one described in this post. Some sites would load with no problem, every time I tried (typically big ones, like all Google and Gawker Media sites). Others would simply refuse to load. The sites that would not load seemed very random, and were different every time I restarted my computer; turned my airport off and on; reset my router; or unplugged and re-plugged my router. For example, sometimes MetaFilter would load, and other times it would not. The problem sites would always fail immediately (displaying a "Problem Loading Page" message), rather than trying to load first and then giving up. The problem was the same across browsers (Firefox, Safari, Chrome), and computers (my best friend's MacBook, my work MacBook). The comments to the post I linked to were very helpful, but nothing cured my situation.

Finally, I called Belkin out of frustration. They were very nice and walked me through re-setting up my network, step by step, using an ethernet cable, renaming the network, setting a new password (WEP), etc. My WiFi was working again!

The only strange thing: I started noticing something like the issue described in this MacRumors post: Whenever I turn my computer on or wake it from sleep, it defaults to an open network that isn't mine. When clicking on the AirPort icon, my network is displayed – among the others – with a lock icon next to it. When I select my network, my computer connects (the password is stored in my keychain). But: when I'm connected to my network, the lock is gone when I click on the AirPort icon and view my network in the list. Since switching to Mac in 2006, I have never been connected to a secure network and seen the lock disappear. The most I can glean from that forum thread is: "Yes, it appears that this is happening to you. Huh. Interesting." No other explanation.

I might have been able to live with this entire strangeness. Except: Tonight when I tried connecting to my network using my work computer (a MacBook running 10.6.2), I wasn't able to connect. I typed in the correct password, but my network's status under System Preferences says that my computer has a self-assigned IP and cannot connect to the Internet. The AirPort icon is greyed-out, with an exclamation point in it (I can take screenshots of any of this if it will help). Before January 1st, I was always able to connect to my home network from this same work computer. No settings have been changed on it (and unfortunately I can't get in there to fiddle around anyway because I don't have admin access).

I called Belkin in a panic again. The gentleman I spoke with didn't seem to understand the Mystery Of The Disappearing Lock, nor could he help me with my connectivity issues from my work computer – he kept adamantly saying that it was a problem with my computer, and that I should contact Apple for help. This may be true, but scheduling a call with an Apple expert could be problematic since my work schedule is very unpredictable and I most probably would have to be in my home, ready to tinker, in order to walk through anything with a representative.

Now, I haven't been able to find a single thing online or a single person to help me with this. Sir Belkin also adamantly told me that no it is not my service provider that is the problem (and he's probably right – hardwired, everything works perfectly). Does anybody know what could possibly be causing this? Let me know if I can provide any more information, or, as I said, screenshots of any of these recent happenings.

Anybody who can shed some light on this issue: thank you so much in advance; my sanity will thank you as well.