Peculiar problem with Tiny's Personal Firewall in XP...pls help

[QwErTyBk]

The people in software/programming couldnt help so I thought I'd try my luck here....

I had been using Zone Alarm for a while, but it's database files became corrupted and has been giving me trouble ever since. So i switched to Tiny's. TPF has been working fairly well for the week or so I've been using it. Just one peculiar problem. My connection seems to shut itself off after a given amount of time. Usually after a few hours of being on the internet.

In ipconfig for a working connection:

Connection-specific DNS suffix blah.blah.edu
IP address 137.238.xxx.xxx
Subnet Mask 255.255.....
Default Gateway .....you get the picture....

in ipconfig for the broken connection:

Connection specific DNS suffix :
Autoconfiguration IP address : 169.xxx.x.192
Subnet Mask : 255.255.0.0
Default Gateway :

When I reboot, the "autoconfig" broken connection goes away for a while and then the connection dies again and I am re-assigned another Autoconfiguration address that is not even in a valid range for the campus network. Rebooting is a pain though and it interrupts downloads and stuff.

What is wrong with my connection? This happens at least once a day. Why am I getting this invalid auto configuration address?
Pls help me if you have any ideas. Thanks in advance!

-qwertybk

 

[QwErTyBk]

bump for some help please...

 

[gaidin123]

That 169.x.x.x address sounds like it might be the default address windows will assign to an interface configured for DHCP when no DHCP server can be found.

It sounds like the DHCP lease time might be really low and/or your firewall software is configured to block access to your DHCP server. Of course if you get a static IP address then this probably doesn't mean much.

If you disable the firewall software everything works fine? If so, then check your settings, and then you might want to just toss out your ruleset and rebuild it from scratch, going slowly enough to test if your connection is getting dropped after a few hours.

Gaidin

 

[BKR]

I've got the same problem with cox cable, narrowed it down to the firewall but can't see anything blocked that would cause this to happen. Either can't obtain an ip without rebooting or when it does connect with ip it bumps me every so often. Anybody got any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

 

[QwErTyBk]

This fixed my problem...it was DHCP being blocked

I looked up DHCP and it used ports 67 & 68 using UDP I think.
I enabled svchost.exe to have UDP communication: local - port 68 both ways any address - port 67

Not sure why having it blocked didnt stop me from getting an ip on a reboot, only when the lease expired.

-Q

 

[randal]

that's because the tcp/ip stack initializes, does the dhcp request broadcast, and then makes the stack available to applications. TinyPF relies on the tcp/ip stack to already be up and running before it can begin filtering it. When the lease expires, Tiny is already running, blocking 67&68.

All a question of timing.

randal

 

[BKR]

Nice find, hey thanks for the info guys looks like it solved my problem as well.

 

[QwErTyBk]

Ahh that makes sense. Thanks randal.