strange zone alarm message

everytime i start my pc now, ZA is telling me that there is a network connection present and asks me permision if i want to allow it it access to the internet, i have been saying 'no' beacause it's only recently started doing it i've no idea what it is as this is just a single pc...

the other computer has exactly the same ip as me except for the last bit, it also has the exact same subnet mask?,i'm not really sure what these things are but there is probably a logical explanation for this, could anyone guess at why it's doing this?

Last octet. Interesting. Run netstat, if you see open connections and you aren't connected to anything then get a different firewall.

ok thanks for replying, i done netstat -a and netstat -n with and without ZA running and noticed nothing unusual, i aslo checked for any listening connections while i was disconnected and there was none,

i made a bit of a mistake in my last post though, as it is not everytime ZA starts but only once after installaition, but i am still kinda concerned that it's telling me there is another computer connected to mine (locally) and it even specifies the ip, 213.106.205.128.

when u said to get another firewall, is this because you think zone alarm may be at fault for giving me this message?

without wanting to sound paranoid my internet has noticeably slowed down a bit recently and i have a new neighbor who is a lot more clued up than me on this sort of thing, in fact he's told me he's a networker, is there anyway he could tap into my cable connction from outside or something?

I used ZA PRO for awhile, and it'll ask you whether you want to allow network access for any program whenever it ATTEMPTS to connect/do something. Even though you may not be online, and you run netstat for example, it'll still alert you that netstat.exe wants to access the network... unless, of course, you have already added it to your 'trusted programs' list.

So, check your startup programs for anything that may not belong (win.ini, startup folder, registry...) and remove whatever it is that is asking for network access.

I hope this helps...

Anything is possible, it's just a question of it being likely... If you think he's "tapping" into your connection you can contact your ISP and ask them to investigate. I would try to have some kind of info for them to go on though, they don't take cable theft lightly.

Three good firewalls, sygate, tiny, and Outpost. Outpost is free, www.agnitum.com
www.sygate.com and www.tinysoftware.com.

Cable is a shared media so all you are ever going to do is slow down. The more people that sign up, the lower your bandwidth goes. That is the way of cable, no getting around that.

Anyway surf safe, hope that helps.

ok thanks again, kore this is my own fault m8 cos i dont think i was accurate enough in my first post, it doesn't actually as for permission to connect to the internet, what it says is that it's decected another system networked to my system and asks if i want to allow it to access my computer and my shared files...

thanks for the links to the other firewalls also korp, i'm gonna do a format in the morning and try them out, if there's still another computer getting detected then i'll look into it further,,


cheers.

Hmmm, Are you by any chance using a Cable modem to connect?

im using the modem ntl supplied me with which is built into my television set top box.