At 02:57 PM -0500 10/24/2005, Rick McCutcheon wrote:
At home I notice that my DSL modem lights occasionally are flashing
quite noticeably when neither my TiBook (Mercury/Panther) nor the
9600 (400/9.1) ethernet connected desk top are on. Both are routed
through a motorola wireless router/ethernet hub.
If it's inbound traffic, then it's one of two things:
a) ARP packets. This is the protocol that the next router upstream
from you uses to find you. It's normal to see about 2 to 5% ARP
traffic on DSL and Cable lines. No big deal -- think of it as leaves
falling on your roof.
b) Infected PCs hunting for more machines to infect. This would be
the Great Pumpkin rattling your doorknob. In addition to the direct
packets (pings, http, etc requests), these "scans" cause about 2/3 of
the ARP traffic.
If it's outbound traffic, then...
We live in an apartment block. I'm wondering if others in the
building might be accessing the modem through the wireless router?
heck yea. You're broadcasting "ip availability" to everyone!
If you don't want your neighbors to be able to use your service, turn
on WEP or WPA encryption.
is there a way for me to check and see if that is the situation by
looking at wireless activity while I'm hooked up with the TiBook
Routers always track who they're talking to. They do this two ways:
In its DHCP table, and in its route table. At least the DHCP table,
and probably also the route table should be viewable from the
router's web interface.
Would other devices like wireless phones possibly make the lights jump?
yes. There are 802.11 "IP Phones" available that can do this.
They're currently a bit pricey tho.
How worried should I be, if at all.
Your xDSL contract probably says you cannot share the service beyond
your own premisis. So you're perhaps risking a "theft of services"
charge from your telecom provider.
But more importantly, because it's your residential service, you
could be held laible for whatever the other users are doing -- file
trading or spamming etc.
HTH,
- Dan.
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