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Comcast blocking even PING?

L

Locarno

Member
Hello,

Here in St. Paul, MN, I have Comcast cable internet service, which is apparently blocking me from running servers. You can't even ping me! I would like to be able to at least run a VNC server for my own private (password-protected) use. Does anyone have any ideas that I can try on my end? Incoming pings are lost even with my firewall disabled. I suppose a first step would be to get PING working, right? Anyone have any ideas? I currently have my IP set to 24.118.81.94, so feel free to ping away.

I am using Windows XP Home with Kerio Personal Firewall. This worked before when I had Time Warner cable internet, but not since switching to Comcast.

Thanks in advance.

P-Sz
 
Try Pings of different sizes (like 65 bytes or 63 bytes).

In Windows, the size modifier is "-l" ("dash-L" lower case).

For example: ping -l 65 xx.xx.xx.xx or ping -l 65 www.cisco.com (this should ping using a 65 byte packet).

Some network block pings of 64 and 1500 (and 1392/1394 somewhere in there) because worms / trojans / viruses will ping to find their next target, but usually don't specifiy odd sizes.

Some of the SBC Yahoo branches use this kind of filtering, Comcast may as well.

Mind your Terms of Service though .... remember how much dial-up sucks.

Good Luck.

Scott
 
Hey, this may be a dumb question but you are not trying to ping form inside your firewall/network are you? You probably won't be able to do this as most devices don't like the loopback. If you are I would try dnsstuff.com alot of usefull tools besides ping as well.

Masul
 
No, I have had a friend pinging me from the outside, and I've tried it with the firewall turned off. I will check out dnsstuff.com. Any other ideas?

P-Sz
 
It could be something as simple as your router setup not to return pings. I have no trouble receiving pings here in NE-PA on Comcast. Wait one... I just called a friend and had him ping me here, no problem. I use DynDNS to maintain a constantly available URL, and pings to either the raw IP or the URL work just fine with Comcast today. 🙂
 
Unless it's one of the local companies that Comcast just purchased, I can't imagine them blocking pings. A lot of people buy broadband to play games, and many games don't work if you can't ping the clients. This really doesn't make much sense...
 
No problem pinging here in central Jersey....Have you lobbed a call into tech support? (It really couldn't hurt - I've never gotten a hassle about running a network, but they don't think I'm doing anything else...)
 
I have Comcast, and AFAIK I can ping myself. I don't remember my IP offhand, but I'll give it a shot later.

It's probably the firewall in your router -- I believe Linksys and Netgear both default to ignoring outside ping requests. Try looking around in the settings in there.
 
I have no router here in my home. Just a software firewall on my PC.

I will try tech support, but I dread explaining why I need to be pinged...

P-Sz
 
You've got all the latest security patches for Windows right?? Disable your firewall for 5 minutes and test it...if it works, its your firewall. If not, its something else. You probably wont be slammed with anything that would crash you if you disable it for a couple minutes just to test something out - provided you're patched up against the RPC bug. I wouldnt do this if you arent patched.
 
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