@Home cable modem curiosity

[cerberus6]

Hi all. I was wondering if someone can give me a good explaination in regards to my RD light on my Motorola cable modem. It flashes quite often. AnalogX's NetStat Live confirms that there is in fact very small amounts of incoming data with no outgoing data whatsoever. So it doesn't seem to be malicious trojan activity (uhh, hmmm.) http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif But what exactly is incomming? A ping or some form of instructions? I'm currently running two software firewalls and two AV's. I can remember asking @home's tech support about this, and I'm almost sure the answer was along the lines of "just a ping", but I would definitely like to know more about this. Anyone else notice this too with your modems?

[jamis]

Could be lotsa things.... here are some examples:

1. Cable company sending automated commands/pings to the modem to test if it's alive.

2. People randomly port scanning... this happens all the time for 'always on' connections... people look for open ports and available connections with automated scripts.. usually script kiddies looking for a box to hack.

3. Someone on your local cable segment broadcasting garbage or left their file/print sharing on.. I believe this can cause a bit of activity on your local segment.

[Hawk35]

I also have a cable connection, and I too got curious. I did some logging and i found that the main causes for the traffic were 2 sources. The primary culpret were folks port scanning for vulnerabilities. But a close second was my ISP scanning for servers (which are NOT allowed on most cable modem systems) attached to the network. I installed a firewall and configured it to block all traffic from the ISP's security servers. So now as far sa the security servers are concerned, I'm simply never online (which is really funny as I havve 3 machines on 24/7/365).

Hawk

[cerberus6]

Ah, now that makes sense. I do remember @Home mentioning something about servers that were not allowed (I don't run any). Thank you both for the responses.

[socalgal]

Also, see if it correlates to the timing of your incoming mail checking setup (if applicable).

[Undeadlord]

Hawk35,

I also have Comcast @home and I had a question. What do they consider a server? I mean I have 4 computers at my house running with a Linksys router. Now 3 of them are personal machines that happen to be on all the time. The last on is a box I have for playing DVD's and MP3's in my living room, also a file server. Does Comcast care about that? Or are they trying to make sure I am not running a FTP site and such?


Undeadlord

[ooops]

A server can be pretty much any PC , I believe they're just making sure your not running a game server or high traffic web server because they will suck up alot of the bandwidth ( a**holes ). http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[Undertow]

I used to run game servers all the time, and I mean all the time, and I am on @home. Never heard a word from them, never had a problem. I don't think they enforce it very well, if at all.

[Undeadlord]

I have a feeling @Home just wants to make sure no one is running any kind of commerical servers .. just my guess though http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif


Undeadlord

[prttybean]

Interesting. Last night I had 37 rather generic messages (zone alarm)all within 40 min regarding some packets from a road runner server. I have had my cable connection for a couple of weeks and haven't seen that before. Checking for a server makes sense. I was going to e-mail them to ask why, but I probably wouldn't get a response anyway.

[jmarszalek]

I work for AT&T Broadband (a.k.a. @Home), and they used to scan for Web and FTP servers a while ago. They do not scan them anymore, due to the company getting more bandwidth.