Linksys wireless-G notebook adapter pings Cisco each second

seems weird - there must be some other piece of software that you are running or viewing that would ping the cisco website ?

No kidding, I can't see why cisco would want however many people own this card who are online pinging their website.

Adair

'Tis true. Given the behaviour that I documented under an obnoxious heading with the word "Linksys" in the subject line, I'm not surprised. I can even see how it can be argued to be reasonable!

But I think I I found the solution. The "monitor" can be "closed", which just means that you press the "X" at the upper right corner of the monitor GUI window to make it disappear (without any representation down in the taskbar). It is not considered "off" because the icon still appears on the system tray. In the "closed" state (but not "off"), the continuous pings do not take place.

However, if you have a software firewall on the PC blocking the pings when the monitor is "open", then the ping command will take almost

100% of the CPU cycles. I consider this to be a nontrivial design flaw.

The workaround is to allow the outgoing pings to that IP address only, with logged notification, and to close the monitor when you're done establishing a working connection with the access point. The monitor is much needed in establishing the connection because of the anomalous behaviour that I described earlier, under the recent obnoxious heading with the word "Linksys" in the subject line. I will try to remain professional henceforth.

Can I get some additional information?

1. Hardware version of the WPC54G card? It's on the serial number sticker. v1.0 thru v7.0
2. Any particular operating system? Your news header shows G2/1.0 on a Pocket PC. What maker and model PDA? I'm curious.
3. What version driver are you using? Looks like every hardware version has a somewhat different driver and "Network Monitor" version.

I have a WPC54G version something in the office that I can try. I hadn't seen this behavior, but then I wasn't looking for it.

I don't wanna offer suggestions until I get a clue as to the OS and hardware version.

wow - interesting that the card might be running in a PDA. In that case, I wonder if the continuous pings might be some method of keeping the card alive vs going to sleep, or maybe looking for a firmware update... but badly implemented... or ??

The original posting showed these headers... I see the "G2" agent, but also the HTTP agent implies Firefox on XP (or is that NT 5.1) ?

~ >> I'm running the Linksys Wireless-G Notebook Adapter, Wireless Network ~ >> Monitor v3.1, for the Linksys WPC54G card. It ping cisco every second ~ >> (Out ICMP [8] Echo Request localhost->

[198.133.219.25]; ~ >> Owner: TCP/IP Kernal Driver). If I turn off the monitor, I can no ~ >> longer access the internet. Before I poke another permanent hole in ~ >> my firewall for this ping, is there a way to operate the wireless card ~ >> without having this ping? As well, has any other WPC54G user observed ~ >> this ping? ~ >>

~ >

~ > seems weird - ~ > there must be some other piece of software that you are running or viewing ~ > that would ping the cisco website ? ~ >

~ ~ No kidding, I can't see why cisco would want however many people own this ~ card who are online pinging their website. ~ ~ Adair

Consider the possibility that they guys who wrote the code for the Linksys card didn't ask the guys who run

for permission to ping ... but at least they "kept it in the family".

It could have been worse - a certain competitor of Linksys' shipped tons of their routers preconfigured to query a public NTP server - and worse, to batter it savagely if it didn't respond in time. Several others have done this as well.

Aaron