I am getting a lot of Alerts from Zone Alarm on my wireless notebook computer. It is blocking the Alerts, but I am wondering what is going on.
I am running Windows XP Home on my desktop and Windows XP Pro on my notebook. I have Zone Alarm Ver.5.5 on both. I have set the trusted zones on both.
They are connected by a Linksys Wireless Access Point and the desktop is connected to the internet via a Linksys router. Both can access the internet and can access shared files on the other. The notebook can print on the desktop's printer.
The alerts say that Zone Alarm has blocked Internet access to your computer (NetBIOS Session) from 169.254.51.219. TCP Port differs - sometines 139, or
1150, or 1169, etc
Can anyone tell me why the notebook gets the alerts, but the desktop does not?
Every time I have seen an 169 IP , it means that the DHCP server on the router couldn't assign an IP to a device requesting a DHCP IP and the device timed out. For the XP O/S, it would have assigned that 169 IP to the NIC, which will allow the machine to access other machines on the LAN but will not allow the machine to access the Internet, because it doesn't have an IP assigned by the router.
And you can check the IP by entering it into the Search Whois box in the link below.
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And it is being explained on page 2 of the link above.
Well the 169.254.51.219 IP is not a Trusted Zone IP to ZA, like the
192.168.1.??? IP(s) from the router.
What I suspect is that the desktop machine is loosing its connection possibly and the 169 is being assigned to the NIC and you're seeing ZA on the laptop block that IP as the machine try's to network with the laptop. Maybe, somehow that is happening and then the machines gets the connection back using the 192 IP range and everything is OK. Or someone is hacking your wireless network and has a connection using the 169 IP trying to access the machine. Hey, it's possible! It's kind of hard to say where the 169 IP is coming from.
The XP O/S does have this wireless roaming ability with Wireless Zero Configuration Services whcih can make your machine drop the connection and try to connect to another wireless network in your area. Have you set the Wireless Preferred network on both machines?
I don't know if Ethereal (a free packet sniffer) will work on a wireless connection. I think it will in this case and you can install it on the desktop and you can review the TCP and UDP traffic/packets leaving the machine which will contain the source IP somewhere in the packet information and see if the desktop is loosing the connection and the 169 IP is being assigned to the wireless NIC.
That's my best guess as to why that 169 IP is being blocked by ZA on the laptop.
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