Re: What is going on with my Dialup?

Tom Wyley <twxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I am using Debian loaded from DVDs so the following is not some Windows
update phenomenon.

Since I left college this summer, I no longer have access to the campus
Hi-speed Internet. So for now I am stuck on a rural dial up line that
somehow the phone company has limited to about 26k throughput. I am
trying to find out from the telco what is going on and why not 56k, but

You may have to accept 26k in a rural area since modems negotiate speed
and long phone lines to the ISP will limit what speed can be negotiated.
But the particular modem or modem configuration can also limit speed.
So it's a good idea to learn all you can about the modem to make sure
the configuration is the best it can be.

You won't get 56k in the U.S., all I've ever gotten is 50667 bps and
that's a rare exception, most of the time it's 48000 or 49999 bps.
And there's a FCC limit of 53kbps, if I remember correctly.

for now I am watching the lights on an external modem and they are
revealing some stuff that I don't like.

....

Next I logged off and dialed back in with no browser at all. I should
have just talked to the ISP hardware and then dropped into a passive mode
with an occasional keep alive blip. But sure enough, in about 20 seconds
in comes a 3 minute continuous receive.

The above post indicates two problems. Something is stealing a bunch of
what little bandwidth I have, and (I think) somebody is talking to me
unasked. This would never be noticed on a broadband link unless someone
was running some kind of trace.

If there is an Internet connection there will be kiddies trying to break
into it and cause trouble. Even on a PPP connection a firewall is a good
idea.

What is the easist way to determine what is incoming on an Internet
connection? I know that I could learn Snort or such like, but I am just
starting my first career and there isn't a whole lot of time left for
playing. A Linux utility of some kind, maybe?

This dumps traffic on ppp0 to standard output:
tcpdump -v -i ppp0

This dumps traffic without DNS lookup for the IP addresses:
tcpdump -vn -i ppp0

There will be a lot of output over 3 minutes in either case, most
of which won't be of much more value than what you see in 3 seconds.
There will be a learning curve. I don't know what, if any, GUI traffic
sniffing tools are available.

Thanx any
Tom

--
Clifford Kite
/* Speak softly and carry a +6 two-handed sword. */
.

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