Zone Alarm Disconnects Router from Internet

Do your ZAP Alerts and Logs show anything important being blocked? Is your router network in ZAP's Trusted Zone?

Craig

Might not be ZA at all, but your router.. I have heard of this happening on many routers. You might check and see if you get problems without ZA running.

Why are you using their products then?

Yours, VB.

Yes it is in the trusted zone. There's a network of two other machines attached to the router. They work.

What am I looking for in the logs? And which log?

Thing is it didn't happen until I bought and installed ZA. I'd be rather reluctant to stay on line without a firewall. It only disconnected once today.

The router is only a simple cheap alternative to the ADSL modem supplied by my ISP, and doesn't have its own firewall.

Jock wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

If ZA is not running as part of the firmware the router is using, then what does one have to do with the other?

Duane :)

I tend to trust large companies to organise some sort of interactive support.

As it happens you can actually talk to them, but they don't advertise this on their sites. They don't even publish the telephone number of their local office. If they did publicise these things they would probably have to employ more staff, and that would never do, would it?

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Why did you buy and install ZA?

Why? I don't mean to be rude but you are demonstrating that you have no clue what ZA is actually doing and would be much better off using the Windows firewall, assuming you have Windows XP SP2. You said in another post that two other machines are connected to your router. Do they continue working when your machine disconnects? What does ipconfig /all say when you are connected and when you are disconnected?

Jason

And if you don't get that support despite the fact that you payed for the product you show up here whining for free support from others for a commercial product.

The product you bought is crap, it does not provide real sucurity and can safely be uninstalled. The best one can say about it is that is does not do too much harm, concerning security it is pure snak-oil.

Wolfgang

You may not be far wrong there! What is a firewall for if not to keep intruders out. The XP firewall only works in one direction, ZA looks at both incoming and outgoing traffic.

I didn't think to check, but while I was re-installing XP on the 'host' computer, the other two remained connected.

Connected:

Windows IP Configuration

Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : aa Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . : Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Unknown IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Binatone ADSL 2000 Ethernet-USB Router Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-0A-E2-10-25-D6 Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.11 Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0 Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.2 DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.2 DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.2 Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : 21 November 2005 10:17:58 Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : 19 January 2038 03:14:07

Disconnected, I don't know. I'm not going to disconnect just to find out, as it is a real hastle to get it started again.

You've lost me there.

It's just that I cannot re-initialise/restart the router while ZA is running. Therefore ZA is the problem!

Some time ago, when I was using the free version of ZA, and I WANTED to disconnect, I couldn't reconnect from within ZA and couldn't restart the router. As I understand it you ought to be able to connect and disconnect from within ZA without having to reboot the computer, reinstall XP or remortgage your house!

I take it you're not a fan of Zone Alarm, then?

You might have been more helpful if you'd suggested an alternative to ZA.

Am Mon, 21 Nov 2005 19:17:54 +0000 schrieb Jock:

The product is snake-oil like all similar products from other vendors because the concept of all these tools is broken as designed.

That is easy:

1. Shut down all unwanted services.
2. Use the winXP built in packet filter if you feel you need to filter incoming traffic.
3. Install only software from sources you trust and use only software you trust.
4. Don't run software that has has a bad history concerning security.
5. Always use you computer with user rights, never work with administrator rights.
6. Use Administrator access only for short periods when you really need it (install software and patches, change system settings etc.).

All that refers to the box itself and it is is enough. No need for snake-oil and the result is a safe box.

If you want to do some more: There is nothing wrong to filter traffic on the perimeter (incoming and outgoing if you like) with a separate device.

best wishes Wolfgang

Am Mon, 21 Nov 2005 19:11:30 +0000 schrieb Jock:

ZA and all similar products claim that they can control outgoing traffic. In fact they can't. Quite some existing malware will be able to trick these tools, switch them off of whatever else.

Once malware that is sufficiently evil is executed the system is toast. It is toast no matter whether a firewall placebo is installed on the system or not. The solution is simple: Don't install or ececute malware.

Wolfgang

Jock wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

ZA is not part of the router's software that makes the router work is it?

If ZA is not part of the router's software and ZA is running on the computer with the Windows O/S then how is the problem you're having be related? ZA has nothing to do with the operations of the router just like the Windows O/S has nothing to do with the control or operations of the router. The router has its own software that makes it operate and it's independent of whatever ZA is doing.

I don't know what your problems are but I doubt that it's a router ZA issue/conflict.

Duane :)

Ok, so, what does ZA do when malware includes its own TCP/IP stack and talks directly to the network card?? If you want to keep intruders out then follow advice already given in this thread. There's no need for me to repeat it. You might also want to stay away from Outlook Express and Internet Explorer. Use alternatives. This will help you avoid installing malware accidentally.

Ok. So, what you meant to say in your original post was "Zone Alarm Pro 6 disconnects the computer it's installed on from the internet regularly and without being asked to do so."

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Ok so we've established that ZA is the cause of the problem and not your router. Since I can only guess at the reason I'll give three possible reasons. ZA is blocking 1. DHCP, 2. DNS, 3. Path MTU discovery.

1 seems unlikely, 2 is more likely, 3 is also very likely in your case. There are may other possible reasons, all of which will go away when you take the best option and remove ZA and follow other advice given in this thread to secure your computer. You don't need ZA, but I know it's going to be hard to accept that if you've already wasted your money and can't get a refund.

Jason

This is a fairy tale. It's not possible to have control about what you're calling "outgoing traffic".

(precompiled binary)

Yes, Zone Alarm Pro is filtering Windows messages now. And of course, this is completely nonsense, because this means hailing popups. No user will be able to deal with it (beside the fact, that this easily can be bypassed, too, by adding an autoclicker for those popups).

Yours, VB.

Try the Windows-Firewall.

No "outgoing traffic control"? Yes, this is OK, because it's useless anyway.

Yours, VB.

No, no, the router does not have a built-in firewall if that's what you mean.

I would agree with that, but the fact remains that the router cannot be restarted with ZA running!