Zone Alarm Lock When Away from Computer

In Message-ID: posted on 14 Jul 2004 11:23:18 -0700, Edward Westin wrote: Begin

When the SBC/AIS team swapped out a bad NIC card and gave me a new aDSL modem, they said my speed would get better if I left the modem on, therefore a good idea. Sometimes I turn everything off when I'm going to be away (force of habit from living in lightning prone Dixie) yet most of the time I just shut down the computer and leave the modem powered. I haven't noticed any difference in speed either way. Maybe it's more convenient for the ISP to have all or most customers on, so as to better balance their system during maintenance time, I don't know. It's an easy enough test to try it both ways, what kind of problems did your tech suggest might occur?

In Message-ID: posted on Wed, 14 Jul

I can't find the blurb right away, but it mentioned leaving it on for the first ten days after installation, maybe that had to do with router assignment at their server? BTW: I'm on SBC/Pacbell San Diego redback11, whatever that means.

Of course, would even unscrew coax from antennas and put the connector in a jar, but I was just referring to an old habit, rather than being ornery, causing me to violate their request for continuous powered up status.

The new modem, a SpeedStream 5100 does give slightly better throughput than the 5360, but I think it has more to do with the internal burnt in firmware versus the software (Enternet300) I had to use with the other one.

RE: ZoneAlarm - I've tried both blocking and allowing outbound dns/dhcp requests, and can't seem to tell any difference there either, except more log entries when outbound is blocked. (ZA Free v3.7.211)

Good idea but even better to unplug everything including phone lines if you suspect strong electric storms.

And there's your proof that its bullshit.

The DSL connection ends at your modem, so any software you might run is unlikely to affect it directly. However, if you set a "personal firewall" to deny all IP traffic, you will be, well, denying all IP traffic. If you run a DHCP client, you would lose your IP address at the end of the lease.

Thor

In Message-ID: posted on Thu, 15 Jul 2004

Isn't Winipcfg a part of windows, and can be used to renew the status?

Thanks for the clarification. Would one of the ways to try to establish a connection, if I were to lose it, be "ipconfig -release" and "ipconfig -renew?" I'm really beginning to think that the tech may have had a point ("don't worry about it"). A few years ago I remember there were a lot of breakins when people just used software firewalls. I remember someone saying that as soon as they installed a hardware router all the problems disappeared. Five years or so later, the 2Wire modem comes with a hardwire firewall (router?) and I'm beginning to get the impression the new technology has improved to the extent where it's not a problem anymore. Though one can never be too secure when it comes to these matters, I guess most people just leave the machine on and the connection on, and it's working for them. I guess if these things were meant to be connected and disconnected, they would have been designed in such a way as to make it very easy to do this.

DHCP stands for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. Unless you have been assigned a static IP address by your provider, you are probably using a DHCP client, to connect to a DHCP server, to retrieve an IP address and other IP configuration data. This data is valid only for a specified period of time, called a lease, so in order for a dynamically configured host to remain part of the network, the lease must be periodically renewed.

If you block DHCP traffic, your client will be unable to renew the lease or to obtain a new lease for the duration of the block. This would effectively disconnect your box from the WAN, although it might still auto-configure itself with a private address for LAN purposes.

Or run automatic updates, or do anything else that requires a network connection.

Thor

I'm not familiar with Zone Alarm, but generically speaking, there shouldn't be any problems, except that you might have to wait a while for the next DHCPDISCOVER to occur. You could probably trigger one manually though.

Thor

Or ipconfig, depending on your version.

Thor