"Disconnect" from Web using DSL

thanatoid wrote:

I do not believe in staying connected when not using the
internet, I don't care WHAT the stupid ISP's say.

Lostgallifreyan wrote:

Nor do I. I mean, what can they do? Sue us for breach of contract
if the electricity supplier lets us down?!

I guess I should expect such a silly mindset from most of you people
here.

Absolutely no reason to be so paranoid about turning off your broadband
internet connection.

For what it's worth, I don't use my ISP-supplied dsl modem. I use my
own, and have disabled the virtual circuits that *might* be used by the
ISP to attempt to contact my modem and perform firmware changes, etc
(not that they could, given that it's a completely different modem than
the one they supply to customers).

But really - what exactly do you people think you're accomplishing by
regulating the on-time of your internet connectivity to such an absurd
degree?

Do you think that something is going to worm it's way into your
computer? Have you never heard of NAT-routing?

In message , 98 Guy writes:
[]
I myself make sure that my modem is connected all the time, as there is
really no practical reason why anyone would want to disconnect their
modem from the internet.

Some people (not me) worry about the electricity used (-:

As long as my computer is powered up, and it usually is all day
long every day, will my computer have an open "gateway" to the
Internet?

Yes. Why does that bother you?

I suppose it increases - extremely marginally! - the opportunity for
hackers etc.; given the NAT in most routers, as well as a reasonable
firewall running in the computer, the chance of this (especially for a
'9x machine!) is pretty small.

There is really no practical or technical reason for seeking to limit
this connectivity as you envision.

In UK, at least, leaving the _MoDem_ on probably makes for a (slightly?
I don't know) better connection, since the equipment at the exchange and
the MoDem continuously reassess the link quality, and tweak accordingly;
if the exchange equipment loses contact with the MoDem, as it obviously
will if you turn it off, it can readjust to a lower more robust rate. I
think some aspects of this self-tweaking have a memory of days.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"Bother," said Pooh, as Eeyore sneezed the crack all over Owl.

On Sun, 16 Oct 2011 18:33:29 -0400, 98 Guy put finger to
keyboard and composed:

Franc Zabkar wrote:

I have reconfigured my modem to power up in the disconnected state:

When I launch my browser, I do it from a shortcut that directs it to
the modem's "status" page:

Franc, what are you accomplishing by limiting your computer's internet
connectivity to specific episodes instead of having a 24/7 internet
connection?

I give myself peace of mind. Whether that is real, or whether it is a
placebo effect, does not really concern me.

However, one undeniable benefit of being able to disconnect and
reconnect in such an expedient fashion is that I'm able to circumvent
those sites that restrict the number of downloads. If clearing the
site's cookies doesn't do it, then a quick disconnect and reconnect
gives me a new IP address. This is because my ISP assigns dynamic IPs
rather than static ones.

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

On Sun, 16 Oct 2011 18:18:58 -0500, Lostgallifreyan
put finger to keyboard and composed:

One thing occurs to me, to do
what you did, you'd have to avoid tedious admin logins, no?

Correct, it is not necessary to login.

In which case, is
it possible to access the modem's configs remotely from the internet? That
could be hazardous unless its own firewall helps to allow access without
login safely from the LAN side only..

I confess that I wasn't aware of such a possibility.

As I understood it, the modem's pages could only be accessed on the
LAN side via 10.1.1.1.

(I'm assuming that your URL's in this
post are not actual modem configs, but copies hosted to illustrate...

Yes, they're copies.

BTW, most, if not all of the modem files on my web space were
retrieved via the modem's FTP interface. The modem firmware also
provides for Telnet access.

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

On Sun, 16 Oct 2011 18:18:58 -0500, Lostgallifreyan
put finger to keyboard and composed:

One thing occurs to me, to do
what you did, you'd have to avoid tedious admin logins, no?

Correct, it is not necessary to login.

In which case, is
it possible to access the modem's configs remotely from the internet? That
could be hazardous unless its own firewall helps to allow access without
login safely from the LAN side only..

I confess that I wasn't aware of such a possibility.

As I understood it, the modem's pages could only be accessed on the
LAN side via 10.1.1.1.

(I'm assuming that your URL's in this
post are not actual modem configs, but copies hosted to illustrate...

Yes, they're copies.

BTW, most, if not all of the modem files on my web space were
retrieved via the modem's FTP interface. The modem firmware also
provides for Telnet access.

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

Franc Zabkar wrote:

Franc, what are you accomplishing by limiting your computer's
internet connectivity to specific episodes instead of having
a 24/7 internet connection?

I give myself peace of mind. Whether that is real, or whether it
is a placebo effect, does not really concern me.

I can assure you that it is a placebo effect.

My link would be going up and down constantly during the day, with a
corresponding level of frustrated waiting on my part, if I arranged my
link to down every time I walked away from my computer and caused a few
minutes of internet inactivity.

You do realize that given the NAT-routing capability inside your modem,
that your computer is effectively shielded from unsolicited incoming
packets - don't you?

However, one undeniable benefit of being able to disconnect and
reconnect in such an expedient fashion is that I'm able to
circumvent those sites that restrict the number of downloads.
If clearing the site's cookies doesn't do it, then a quick disconnect
and reconnect gives me a new IP address. This is because my ISP
assigns dynamic IPs rather than static ones.

Yes, that particular aspect of getting a new IP address to continue free
downloading from one-click file hosters or file-lockers is something I'm
well aware of.

I use a program called Jdownloader to facilitate downloading from those
sites, and one of the things that Jdownloader does is to automatically
perform a log-in into my router to cause a disconnect and reconnect when
necessary to continue downloading.

But that's quite a different reason to disconnect your connection than
we're talking about in this thread.

Franc Zabkar wrote in
:

I confess that I wasn't aware of such a possibility.

As I understood it, the modem's pages could only be accessed on the
LAN side via 10.1.1.1.


In my case, 192.168.1.254, so a LAN IP, so I think you may be right, though
it's possible that a person away from their machine might need to alter some
aspect of their net connection from outside. I never had need and opportunity
at same time, to try this, so I never did. I often wonder about it though,
and leave a login and pass set in case there is a way open for others who
try.

I have no idea if my modem has FTP and Telnet. Weird, but it never occured
to me that there might be a use for them in the modem itself. I'd like to
change its web page code, but I do it with filtering in a browser (or
Proxomitron on past machines), as I thought they'd be read-only ROM or some
such.

Lostgallifreyan wrote in
:

read-only ROM

Um, not that there's any other kind.

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote:

As long as my computer is powered up, and it usually is all day
long every day, will my computer have an open "gateway" to the
Internet?

Yes. Why does that bother you?

I suppose it increases - extremely marginally! - the opportunity for
hackers etc.; given the NAT in most routers

Yes.

Given that your modem has built-in NAT-routing, then there is - ZERO
- opportunity that an unsolicited packet will ever reach your computer
(but if you're running Windows 98, there's really no harm even if it
did).

as well as a reasonable firewall running in the computer

Firewall software running on windows 98 has ZERO usefulness from a
security standpoint.

If you run firewall software because you want to exert what I think is a
ridiculous level of control on the software running on your system, then
that's a different perogative. But as a security mechanism to prevent
viral or trojan infection, your software firewall will fail you 9 times
out of 10. But rest assured that of those 9 failures, 8 of them will in
turn fail to cause any harm to a system running windows 98 because the
exploit code was designed for NT-based windows and will fail to run
under win-98.

And again remember that the NAT-router built into your modem will do a
better or more efficient job of in-bound firewalling than your software
firewall.

And one more thing: Win-98 was never vulnerable to the 6 or 7 known
classes of network worms that have circulated over the internet over the
past 10 years. So even a win-98 system connected to the internet
through a directly-routable IP address (no nat-routing, and no software
firewall) would not have been infected even when directly exposed to any
of these worms. Win 2K and XP, on the other hand, failed laughably when
exposed to these worms.

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote in
:

In UK, at least, leaving the _MoDem_ on probably makes for a (slightly?
I don't know) better connection, since the equipment at the exchange and
the MoDem continuously reassess the link quality, and tweak accordingly;
if the exchange equipment loses contact with the MoDem, as it obviously
will if you turn it off, it can readjust to a lower more robust rate. I
think some aspects of this self-tweaking have a memory of days.


I think this is true, which is why I decided to make my disconnects on the
LAN side.