My ISP is confuseing me.

My ISP seems to be makeing alot of changes. One I can't test my firewall at www.pcflank.com anymore, my conection speed droped below that of DSL and I am paying for cable, periodicaly my browser and other apps try to make a spontanius conection with my ISP.

When I go to www.pcflank.com and do the stealth test:

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IP Address test
The test has found that the IP address used by your computer cannot be scanned. This commonly occurs because of a firewall program on your computer and/or you are connected to the Internet through a proxy-server or your ISP uses Network Address Translation (NAT) to share IP addresses.

This means the test cannot check your system as the results of the testing would be incorrect.

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I did a speed test, I used to do them at bandwidthplace.com but they nolonger offer them. Last night I did one at another site, for the cable speed test and my results in the comparison was below that of DSL. And below Cable, and T1.

Im paying now like 48 bucks per month for a peice of $%#@

I had done speed patches, one called Quest@home, that made a huge difernce a few months ago, but as I can see my speed is far less then what it was, but its never been up to the advertised speed.

Ocasionaly my browser, chat client, mail client... trys to make a sonection to my ISP. This never hapened before. I have been using a firewall for two or so years, and this particular firewall kerio i have used for at least a full year. Ive become quite familiar with it. these conections to my ISP seem spontaniius. And if I deny them, it does NOT stop me from doing what I was doing. Either browseing the internet, sending/recieving emails, chating with a friend, none of these activites are interupted by denying the conection.

Can someone help explain to me what might be going on.

I know they have made network changes because my IP address changed yesterday over night. And they had been useing DHCP. My IP had remained the same (24.102.x.x) for a long time. Now it apears to be on a difernt network 66.178.x.x

Mine still in Canada, my friends in the USA, but his ip starts with 24.101, as mine used to.

Just checked winipcfg, its still reporting 24.102.x.x but Antionlines Ip Locator in the toys&Tools reports 66.178.x.x maybe they are using a proxy which might explain why I cant test my firewall anymore, but doesnt explain why my computer makes spontanius conections to ISP

Also if Im makeing a client server now, what ip address do i put to conect to myself, if I dont want to use 127.0.0.1, do i put my real ip or the one 66.178.x.x?

Well if you look on your post you are behind a proxy wether you are doing it or your ISP is you are now behind a proxy. Happens often with certain ISPs. Guess you have to contact them to ask why.

ahh, ok then this hapened over night, because I wasnt before, that never showed Proxy: detected. Then I have another question

It was also sugested that my ISP might be useing NAT. I looked it up and its Network Address Translation, and alows one IP to be shared between several computers, and serves as a security enchancer, easyer to administer on their part, and is cheaper as they can assign more then one computer the same IP.

Ok so lets say Its NAT. Now lets also say I have a server on my computer, and i give the address 24.102.x.x the one reported by winipcfg, to my friend, does this mean he/she will not only be conecting to my computer but also someone elses computer???

Most likely they won't be able to connect to you. Well it all depends on what ports are open on the proxy. NAT is most likely not being used if it is a routable ip. What you really should do is check the ISP's website or call them up and see what are all the changes they have implemented. If you are running some sort of server and they are going through a proxy it is more than likely being monitored more closely for traffic. In most fair use agreements it is not permitted to run ftp servers web servers or mail servers on consumer lines so I would really check with them if I were you.

Just curios here, but what speeds did you get when you tested you connection?

Speed I got reported was 83 kilobytes / second, they said the norm for cable is 150 kilobytes / second.

did speed test at http://www.cable-modem.net/features/oct99/speed.html

...As for the spontaneous attempts to connect, I would find it hard to believe
that it was anything other than software on my own machine. A lot of people
experience this. It is most annoying on dialup. Many progs these days are routinely
written to want to connect, whether it is strictly necessary to their normal
function or not. Everybody wants to do a dns lookup, check a database
or report in to give the author statistics on usage, not to mention serious spyware.
:cool:

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Speed I got reported was 83 kilobytes / second, they said the norm for cable is 150 kilobytes / second.

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Just so you will know, cable lacks the inherent stability that DSL enjoys....with cable your speed will always decrease in direct relation to any increase in the amount of cable users (that subscribe to the same provider) online at the same time. The same rule (in my experience) goes for satellite connections as well.

>>Many progs these days are routinely written to want to connect, whether it is strictly necessary to their normal function or not.

A few of my progs do a update, or some progs I had before also did send usage updates, but this is weird because the spontanius conection is to my ISP. Would that not have to be coded into the program?

I had checked the TOS for my ISP to see if there wer any rulse against running a web server, they said no provideing email services from your personal mail server to others, no running bots, news portals were not to be run from your machine, and provideing such services of irc or shell acounts. But nothing mentioning running a web server.

I had run a web server for aproxamitely three months, and a few months before that too. But I will email my ISP and verify with them. I stoped running my web server os of now because I dont have enough time to maintain it and I only get a few people per month.

Why dont you install a packet sniffer (like ethereal)? Then you will know exactly what is going on as to your connections to your isp. AFAIK to go through your isp's proxy you have to set your browser and such to do so .Usually they tell you to in there set up spiel to use their proxy because it caches pages and increases your speed.... although it it can be faster to not use their proxy or DNS i have found .I get very fast speeds (450 kBs dl) but my isp can't even maintain their website properly , go figure?