Pinging, What is and why

[Fruss Tray Ted]

What is and why is there pinging?

Someone mentioned it can be used to see if you can connect to the pc or site or in other words to see if the site is available. My main beef is sometimes I get pinged so much I cannot do anything edgewise as far as typing or surfing and the likes. This is why I despise shareware sites that ping you till it's coming out your ears just after a song or two. What can be done to prevent or at least get it out of your way other than letting down your guard?

[John0904]

As you said, "it can be used to see if you can connect to the pc or site or in other words to see if the site is available."
Just that.

If you are being pinged a lot where you can't surf anymore, that sounds a lot like a DoS (denial-of-service) attack against you.
Only thing you can do is report it to your ISP and they will block the ISP(s) that is causing that.

Another likely cause would be spyware. You can do a Google search for spyware removal programs.

Hopefully more info will pour in. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

[Rick]

Ping is a command that can be used to test a connection.
For example on a local net work I can Ping another system using it’s node address and the program will send data packets to the node and the node will send them back.
Ping will show that data packet Size, Time to ping and return and Amount of packet returned.
To show the connection status ..

You can install a fire wall on your system like Zone Alarm and block this .
What it (ZA)will do is stop the return of the data packet.
This will make your address appear as dead / off line.
you become invisible to everyone else on the web or network.

To use ping open a dos window , or if using XP a command prompt (run then CMD) and type in
“ping xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx” where xxx is a known address

[John0904]

Btw, I just read another post saying that you are on a 56k connection.

Ignore my other suggestion about the DoS attack. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

It could just be the phone lines that is causing a lot of lag.
I don't know. But that would be the first thing I looked at.

First thing I would do is remove all other connections to that phone line.
Not just in that room, but every room that has a phone line.
Caller ID, other phones, answering machines, ect...
Then reconnect and see if it make a difference.

If not, I would then try to connect at another location.
Closer to the ISP if possible.

[YODA74]

example of useing a ping........

Page cannot be displayed “ Error “
{Do A Ping} by YODA74

(You will need a known working machine to perform this).

If your constantly receiving an Error that the page cannot be displayed first off try Repairing your Browser if this fails, then your problem may be an Internet accelerator. Which means It’s caching the IP addresses of the web sites and if the address changes you will not be able to connect to the site.

So to find out if this is your situation, were going to show you how to “Ping “ Lets start by opening a Dos window and see if we can connect to one of the sites giving you the problem. (Seems I don’t know which site that is, we will use yahoo as an example). (In the working machine).


In the Dos window let’s type the word, Ping www.yahoo.com (http://www.yahoo.com) now hit enter the computer will try and connect to the site 4 times. Copy down the address it sends back and take it to the machine giving you the problem. Now open up the same Dos window and do the same thing, then compare the addresses. If they are different then your system is caching the address and not updating them correctly. (Because they do change)

If this is the case, you will need to find a file named HOST in the windows folder…. C: drive. At this point you will have to rename it HOSTS.OLD this should take care of the problem, just remember to disable any Internet-accelerator utility that may have caused this in the first place.









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YODA74@windows-sucks.com
CCMR (http://www.dreamwater.net/tech/yoda74/index.html)

PUSH TO TEST. RELEASE TO DETONATE.
[Closed captioned for the thinking impaired.]

[kfh]

Hi All,

Wow I've learnt alot today from just a simple question.
Never used the CMD promt before.

Thanks All,
http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif
kfh.


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Sequitur Patrem Non Passibus Aequis

[This message has been edited by kfh (edited 06-06-2002).]

[Anubis]

Another command that is handy to go along with ping is tracert. Same format as ping, simply type tracert www.yahoo.com (http://www.yahoo.com)

What this does is not only ping the hops to the server location but it will display either the name or IP for the box it hits. You can see WHERE the ping is dieing, very helpful in determining if the packet is even getting to the server your trying to talk too.

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When my thoughts become my biggest fear
Ah, what's the difference, I'll die
In this sick world of mine

[Fruss Tray Ted]

Just prior to this post I ran Spider and it doesn't seem to give me an idea if I have spyware, it just let's me'clean the system and reboot. If anyone is familiar with Spider, is there a list of offending items in my pc available?

Not only pings but port attacks along with the pings can be a full time job. Should I find a way to stop the pop up and just let the firewall do it's job in the background (if there is such a way)?

I'm so new to pc's I haven't dared to go into DOS. I assume I get there by the start>shut down>reboot into DOS mode? Are these ideas you so kindly share a way of tracing if you DON'T have a firewall?

I already have a good firewall but the problem is, even when I put the setting to trusting, the event popup from the firewall comes up so often that I almost want to disable it entirely so I can get on with things. And every once in a while I notice the event page under the page I am on making me worried that the attack as it is called, is actually getting through and viewing files or other things I consider private.

Where you mention a way to trace it in DOS, my firewall has 'trace' and 'report this event' capabilities. It's just so annoying to have to close the page up to several time's a minute in some cases. I even have been driven to log off from the net and then relog-on, but it only works sometimes.

Even IBM at times has pinged my pc so often it makes navigating their site difficult and extremely annoying. The other thought is music download sites. Do they expect us to have NO firewall so the shareware (music) can work?
A brief list of sites and port attempts on my pc are:

PRP to port 2091 almost as many as pings X 17
Socks to 1080 X1
Telnet to 23 X1
SSH Remote login to 22 X1
file transfer to 21 X1
to 6346 X1
pings mostly IBM lately due to going to their site X12
NETBIOS to 139

The list was sooo long I deleted what would have been below here.

I know I can find the info at the firewall site but the question is, how to get it to slow or stop entirely. Is contacting my ISP the only way? I would have to update the list every other day!


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Past rocks of quartz and granite, which gave mother nature birth.
Burial ground of ancient man, his life no more is seen.
A journey through his time unknown, I wonder where he's been.
The shore now gone behind the hills, a forest in our sight,
Rocks and distant mountains, bathed in waves of blinding light.
Forests from a far gone time, no living man has seen,
A private prehistoric world, for you and I, a dream...
(Rick Wakeman: Journey to the center of the earth 1974)

[Paleo Pete]

Occasionally I'll get so many pings/hits on Zone Alarm I'll simply turn the pop up notification off for the night. The firewall still works, it just doesn't continuously pop up the alert window.

Spider cleans the Internet History, most importantly the hidden index.dat file. It's not intended to identify spyware. Check Gibson Research (http://grc.com/intro.htm) and you'll find info on spyware as well as Internet security, and check out the Sheilds Up page, you can test your computer and see how well your firewall works.

Also look for AdAware, that's probably the one you want for identifying and removing spyware.

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[This message has been edited by Paleo Pete (edited 06-06-2002).]