Constant Pings by ISP is Slowing down my Dialup Connection

[chowderhead]

<Rant> Right now, I am not in a position to get broadband so I am ok with the 56k dialup. I have been getting good connection speed with dialup. Recently, I have been getting A LOT of pings from my ISP (ATT worldnet) from all over the country. This is causing my connection to hang and 404 errors which I need to refresh. My connection is crap now because of the constant hang and slow loading of many website. I am also apparently trying to upload something to my ISP as it is constantly being blocked by ZoneAlarm ( I hope it ain't spyware cr*p). :|

Is there a good way to fix this problem short of accepting all the pings individually on ZoneAlarm. Is it safe to accept these packets?
The ATT CRS are no help. They could care less. I cannot right now switch ISP because I need to maintain the information from my website.
Thanks in advance!

Edit: I don't believe it is spyware or anything because I have run adaware, Zonealarm and Norton AV.

 

[Kadarin]

It would be wise to run a virus scan and to run Ad-Aware along with Spybot to check for spyware. It would also be a good idea to read the output ZoneAlarm gives you so you can have some idea of what processes are trying to send packets out on your connection. Knowledge is power.

Secondly, are these actually pings (icmp echo requests) that you're getting? And are they actually from your ISP (or from users of your specific ISP)? And how have you determined this?

 

[Eli]

Originally posted by: Astaroth33
It would be wise to run a virus scan and to run Ad-Aware along with Spybot to check for spyware. It would also be a good idea to read the output ZoneAlarm gives you so you can have some idea of what processes are trying to send packets out on your connection. Knowledge is power.

Secondly, are these actually pings (icmp echo requests) that you're getting? And are they actually from your ISP (or from users of your specific ISP)? And how have you determined this?

My thoughts exactly.

Regardless, they would have to be pinging you maliciously for it to actually slow your connection down, and it certainly wouldn't cause 404 errors. It'd just be really slow.

 

[chowderhead]

thanks for the reply. I have run adaware and Norton AV for but I don't have spybot. I don't believe it is spyware because if I clear the list of alerts on ZoneAlarm it seems to help a bit
I believe they are pings because this what Zonealarm is saying: I get tens of these each couple of minute or so.

ZoneAlarm blocked a ping (ICMP echo request) sent to your computer by a machine at IP address 12.72.92.xxx. A ping is a ICMP protocol message that is used to check whether a computer, identified by its IP address, is actually connected at a given time.

The Source DNS are from cities all across the country with the ISP dial-access - moniker.
Lastly, I did not mean I am getting 404 errors (sorry it is late and I am tired) ... I meant cannot find server errors after it hangs for a while. I will continue to badger the ATT people. Please advise if ya'll have any other suggestions.
Thanks!

 

[jjyiz28]

Originally posted by: chowderhead
thanks for the reply. I have run adaware and Norton AV for but I don't have spybot. I don't believe it is spyware because if I clear the list of alerts on ZoneAlarm it seems to help a bit
I believe they are pings because this what Zonealarm is saying: I get tens of these each couple of minute or so.

ZoneAlarm blocked a ping (ICMP echo request) sent to your computer by a machine at IP address 12.72.92.xxx. A ping is a ICMP protocol message that is used to check whether a computer, identified by its IP address, is actually connected at a given time.

The Source DNS are from cities all across the country with the ISP dial-access - moniker.
Lastly, I did not mean I am getting 404 errors (sorry it is late and I am tired) ... I meant cannot find server errors after it hangs for a while. I will continue to badger the ATT people. Please advise if ya'll have any other suggestions.
Thanks!

when zonealamr blocks the pings, it doesn't respond to them at all, so how could ur connect get slowed down.?? i have the same isp, and i use the free ZA. i get a lot of pings too. not sure if its directly from att. and i also, like you get it all over the US.

and i also get att triing to connect to outside, i just block it.

and configure ZA so that it does this all hidden. once i block it, and i know i don't ever want the connection, i click the tab that says to remember this settings.

 

[Amorphus]

Originally posted by: jjyiz28
when zonealamr blocks the pings, it doesn't respond to them at all, so how could ur connect get slowed down??

it doesn't matter if the internal (software) firewall doesn't respond to the pin, you're still downloading the ping packet, which will clog up your downstream bandwidth.

 

[jjyiz28]

Originally posted by: Amorphus

Originally posted by: jjyiz28
when zonealamr blocks the pings, it doesn't respond to them at all, so how could ur connect get slowed down??

it doesn't matter if the internal (software) firewall doesn't respond to the pin, you're still downloading the ping packet, which will clog up your downstream bandwidth.

that doesn't make sense. so if someone is doing an icmp ping of death on a firewall router, and the router is set up not to respond to the ping, it will still clog up the downstream bandwidth??

 

[JW310]

b

Originally posted by: jjyiz28

Originally posted by: Amorphus

Originally posted by: jjyiz28
when zonealamr blocks the pings, it doesn't respond to them at all, so how could ur connect get slowed down??

it doesn't matter if the internal (software) firewall doesn't respond to the pin, you're still downloading the ping packet, which will clog up your downstream bandwidth.

that doesn't make sense. so if someone is doing an icmp ping of death on a firewall router, and the router is set up not to respond to the ping, it will still clog up the downstream bandwidth??

Exactly... the router is still receiving the packets, just not doing anything with them. If it were replying to them, it would clog up both the downstream and upstream bandwidth.

JW

 

[Adul]

Originally posted by: jjyiz28

Originally posted by: Amorphus

Originally posted by: jjyiz28
when zonealamr blocks the pings, it doesn't respond to them at all, so how could ur connect get slowed down??

it doesn't matter if the internal (software) firewall doesn't respond to the pin, you're still downloading the ping packet, which will clog up your downstream bandwidth.

that doesn't make sense. so if someone is doing an icmp ping of death on a firewall router, and the router is set up not to respond to the ping, it will still clog up the downstream bandwidth??

yes it will

 

[jjyiz28]

so how will you configure your firewall to not even download the icmp packet if it is already setup to not respond to them??

also under my zonealarm, if i was downloading the icmp packet but not responding to them, why does it show that the direction "incoming" icmp ping has been blocked?? shouldn't it be the other way around?? ie) i already downloaded it, but ZA not respond to it, so it should be "outgoing" icmp right??

 

[CTho9305]

Doesn't the Welchia worm use ICMP? I doubt you're actually being legitimately pinged by your ISP.

 

[Aves]

Originally posted by: jjyiz28
so how will you configure your firewall to not even download the icmp packet if it is already setup to not respond to them??

You can't. You would have to get your upstream provider to filter the packets from coming to you which they won't do.

Originally posted by: jjyiz28
also under my zonealarm, if i was downloading the icmp packet but not responding to them, why does it show that the direction "incoming" icmp ping has been blocked?? shouldn't it be the other way around?? ie) i already downloaded it, but ZA not respond to it, so it should be "outgoing" icmp right??

That's really a question of semantics.

Incoming/Outgoing typically refers to where the request is initiated. You receive an incoming ping and then send a reply. In the case of outgoing, you attempt to ping someone and then wait for a reply.

 

[jjyiz28]

Originally posted by: aves2k

Originally posted by: jjyiz28
so how will you configure your firewall to not even download the icmp packet if it is already setup to not respond to them??

You can't. You would have to get your upstream provider to filter the packets from coming to you which they won't do.

Originally posted by: jjyiz28
also under my zonealarm, if i was downloading the icmp packet but not responding to them, why does it show that the direction "incoming" icmp ping has been blocked?? shouldn't it be the other way around?? ie) i already downloaded it, but ZA not respond to it, so it should be "outgoing" icmp right??

That's really a question of semantics.

Incoming/Outgoing typically refers to where the request is initiated. You receive an incoming ping and then send a reply. In the case of outgoing, you attempt to ping someone and then wait for a reply.

thanks for the clear explanation!