Can leaving a TELNET window to my router open hurt anything?

[MichaelD]

My ISP has been giving me fits lately...too bad; they've been awesome for the past 18 months. Anyway, I've been keeping a Command/TELNET window, with the connection to my router open lately...I've been wondering if this is "bad" in any way? Thanks.

 

[Lord Evermore]

Most routers have a default timeout set so that you get booted out after awhile anyway. It can't hurt anything if yours does allow you to stay connected, unless you try and telnet from another machine, since it will probably only allow one connection at a time.

What kinds of problems are you having that are so bad it's easier to keep a telnet session open constantly rather than occasionally opening a session up and then closing it when you're done? If your service is going down that often, you should get them to fix the problem.

 

[ScottMac]

It shouldn't be any big deal. At the very worst, you are using some cycles from the router processor and maybe taking some memory out of the pool. If there's no apparent performance hit, you're probably OK.

FWIW

Scott

 

[MichaelD]

Thanks for the replies, Gents. My IP changes every five to sixty minutes. This is a new problem, started about 5 days ago. I do have a dynamic IP, but prior to this prob occuring, I'd keep the same IP for weeks. My router keeps my connection alive.

The reason I've been keeping the TELNET window open is so i can see what my darn IP is, so I can tell people where to go to get to my FTP server. I guess I'll just have to get that proggy from DynDns.org or something?

 

[nihil]

If your ip changes that much you should just use dyndns.org like you said. But as far as i know you're going to have to update your ip everytime it changes. This may be a problem if it changes as often as you say it does. I'd either recommend finding out why it changes that often or perhaps script something that will automatically update your ip in the dyndns database. Good luck.

 

[ScottMac]

You might want to check with your provider. Address updates that often are abnormal. The implication is that the DHCP lease is ~an hour...really abnormal. They may have a problem with their system and not know it (or they're working on it).

Whatever, a more typical lease time (for those ISPs that actually change it alot) is about a week. If your modem/router/whatever was just rebooting, and the lease was still good, you'd get the same IP address up until the time the lease expired.

Good Luck

Scott

 

[MichaelD]

Thanks much. It's really frustrating, b/c when I call SWBell, I get their Tier I CSR's, who just last week were working for AOL.

They say "well, I'm looking at my screen and show no outages for your area, so there isn't anything wrong or anything I can do for you." :|

Now, SWBell uses another company named ASI for the upkeep of their pipes, but they are only responsible for your connectivity; if you can connect, they are off the hook. I got this directly from the ASI rep I spoke w/this morning.

He informed me that "yeah, that does sound mighty unusual, but SWB is responsible for assigning IPs and any probs your having w/that would be them, not us. As long as you have connectivity, that's our end of the deal."

So, I guess I need to sit in front of my terminal for a few hours and note how often my ip changes so I have some ammo when I talk to SWBell. Thanks again.

 

[Lord Evermore]

Actually, in order to have all the information they need AND make it so they can't tell you they can't support you, you need to connect a single machine to your DSL line (I assume it's DSL) and leave it connected, and find out whether the IP gets changed constantly that way. Windows and presumably any other OS will allow you to see what the actual lease time is on the IP, so you'll know if it's changing due to the lease expiring too quickly (your router may also have the ability to do this, it might be a menu option or something that has to be accessed through a command prompt in the router).

If the lease is in fact being given a time to live of only a few minutes or hours, then you can call SWB and ask them whether this is normal now or not. If the first level techs don't KNOW the answer (as opposed to just saying "well nobody told us anything is wrong") then you simply ask for the next level or supervisor/lead, and don't get off the phone till you talk to someone that can tell you for sure whether this is the way they're running their DHCP system now (which it almost assuredly is not, as they'd have too many people losing connections or getting IP conflicts with that often a renewal).

There's a very slight chance they're doing it now though in order to prevent people like you running servers, since they'd get a lot of crap from the media if they blocked ports, and since you could use any port you wanted to anyway.

 

[MichaelD]

Thanks, Lord Evermore.

I understand what you're saying about "lease expiration". If I do an ipconfig/all the only thing I see is my router's IP (192.168.0.1/factory default) because that's my gateway for the rest of my LAN.

If I go into the router's menu's, there is an option to "drop WAN", but nothing showing leases. I just intentionally dropped my IP, and wrote down the exact time that I got a new one...we'll see how long it lasts. me\<--gathering fodder for cannon fire to SWB.

If this keeps up, I *may* switch to Roadrunner...they are running a nice special right now. Free activation. Free modem. First three months 1/2 price. (basically, 1 1/2 months free)

My GF has RR and has had the same IP for about a week now. :|

 

[Sukhoi]

From what I remember, having IPs change that fast sounds like they have too many users for the IP range supplied to the DHCP server. Or it could be some other problem.

 

[JW310]

Originally posted by: MichaelD
Thanks, Lord Evermore.

I understand what you're saying about "lease expiration". If I do an ipconfig/all the only thing I see is my router's IP (192.168.0.1/factory default) because that's my gateway for the rest of my LAN.

If I go into the router's menu's, there is an option to "drop WAN", but nothing showing leases. I just intentionally dropped my IP, and wrote down the exact time that I got a new one...we'll see how long it lasts. me\<--gathering fodder for cannon fire to SWB.

If this keeps up, I *may* switch to Roadrunner...they are running a nice special right now. Free activation. Free modem. First three months 1/2 price. (basically, 1 1/2 months free)

My GF has RR and has had the same IP for about a week now. :|

Re-read what Lord Evermore suggested. Eliminate the router from the connection -- connect the DSL modem directly to your computer. Then do an ipconfig /all once the computer you're using has established a connection to the internet. That'll let you see if it's an actual problem with your service or if it's something with your router that's creating problems.

JW

 

[MichaelD]

Originally posted by: JW310

Originally posted by: MichaelD
Thanks, Lord Evermore.

I understand what you're saying about "lease expiration". If I do an ipconfig/all the only thing I see is my router's IP (192.168.0.1/factory default) because that's my gateway for the rest of my LAN.

If I go into the router's menu's, there is an option to "drop WAN", but nothing showing leases. I just intentionally dropped my IP, and wrote down the exact time that I got a new one...we'll see how long it lasts. me\<--gathering fodder for cannon fire to SWB.

If this keeps up, I *may* switch to Roadrunner...they are running a nice special right now. Free activation. Free modem. First three months 1/2 price. (basically, 1 1/2 months free)

My GF has RR and has had the same IP for about a week now. :|

Re-read what Lord Evermore suggested. Eliminate the router from the connection -- connect the DSL modem directly to your computer. Then do an ipconfig /all once the computer you're using has established a connection to the internet. That'll let you see if it's an actual problem with your service or if it's something with your router that's creating problems.

JW

Ahhh, I guess I missed that. My bad. Will do...I'm very curious to see what the lease expiration window is....Thanks.