| Index | Recent Threads | Unanswered Threads | Who's Active | Guidelines | Search |
 |
World Community Grid Forums
Category: Support
Forum: BOINC Agent Support
Thread: Zone Alarm activity? |
| No member browsing this thread |
|
Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 8
|
|
| Author |
|
|
petekins
Cruncher Joined: Aug 3, 2007 Post Count: 17 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
|
Hi All,
Just joined WCG, last night,downloaded BOINC agent, all is well, CPU crunching at 100%, machine is left running 24/7.Running 2.66 GHZ overclocked to 3.2, XP pro SP2. 512mb ram.Nvidia 128mb card. What concerns me is that Zone Alarm is constantly showing (pulses about 1/sec) in and out traffic! I've checked my internet status and no bytes are coming or going, even though ZA seems to indicate there is! Whats going on? Is this normal? Will this affect results returned? Thanks in anticipation, Peter.(petekins) |
|||
|
||||
|
Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Hello Petekins,
The Zone Alarm flickering is annoying but OK. Once a second, the BOINC program communicates with the application program (this is called the heartbeat). It uses the standard network framework for intercommunication, and the firewall responds to the OS calls via port 31416, even though nothing is going out over the Internet. Lawrence |
||
|
|
twilyth
Master Cruncher US Joined: Mar 30, 2007 Post Count: 2130 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
|
BOINC is designed for remote operation - can manage boinc on one machine from another - useful if you have a server farm or multiple machines at various locations (such as non-tech savvy friends). However you can't turn this feature off when you don't want to use any of the remote control features. When using boinc manager solely on the local machine, it still uses a comm port to transfer information to itself. The only difference is that it uses the default local IP address of 127.0.0.1. So as far as Zone Alarm is concerned, there is network activity. But if you unplug your ethernet cable, you'll see that the activity continues - even though there is no longer a network connection.
----------------------------------------I personally think you should be able to tell boinc to communicate locally without creating bogus network traffic, but I seem to be in the minority. The response I've gotten in the past is that it's Zone Alarm's problem. Except it isn't - it's just doing it's job - and doing it better that any other firewall out there.   |
||
|
|
petekins
Cruncher Joined: Aug 3, 2007 Post Count: 17 Status: Offline Project Badges:
|
Thanks to lawrence and twilyth for your responses,
I agree with you, twilyth WCG should correct this, not ZA, which I also think is the best F/wall going -and its free! Thanks again chaps, Peter. |
||
|
|
Sekerob
Ace Cruncher Joined: Jul 24, 2005 Post Count: 20043 Status: Offline |
.... I personally think you should be able to tell boinc to communicate locally without creating bogus network traffic, but I seem to be in the minority. The response I've gotten in the past is that it's Zone Alarm's problem. Except it isn't - it's just doing it's job - and doing it better that any other firewall out there. I venture to think that the 'minority' is like a few parts per million+ (that's how many run this client). For the other readers: ZA can in fact be told same as Sunbelt/Kerio PF e.g. to ignore this particular traffic. It should have brought up an alert on first installation and permission granted. At BOINC dev they posted a tip to force the permission requests, which was to delete the exceptions after exiting BOINC and restarting BOINC. See The Vista FAQ in the Start Here forum, point 8 as it has a section on what needs granting on any windows with a software firewall. Petekins, BOINC is an open source software run by many DC projects and as said used by over a million volunteers. It comes as it was designed. If feeling strongly about it, carry your objections to the BOINC developers forum.
WCG
----------------------------------------Please help to make the Forums an enjoyable experience for All! [Edit 1 times, last edit by Sekerob at Aug 3, 2007 12:52:54 PM] |
||
|
|
twilyth
Master Cruncher US Joined: Mar 30, 2007 Post Count: 2130 Status: Offline Project Badges:
|
That doesn't prevent ZA from logging the activity as network traffic. Giving boinc permission for network activity has never been an issue. You would have to use ZA to understand. It has icons that flash when for a given program when it detects network activity on the part of that program. Also, the system tray icon will flash when there is "traffic". As far as I know, there's no way to tell ZA to ignore the traffic. I don't think there would be any point to that even if it could be done.
----------------------------------------As for the "minority" being in the parts per million - maybe you could provide some statistics to back that up. Do you even know how many boinc users also use ZA? [Edit 1 times, last edit by twilyth at Aug 3, 2007 1:06:16 PM] |
||
|
|
Sekerob
Ace Cruncher Joined: Jul 24, 2005 Post Count: 20043 Status: Offline |
Need no back up.... it's the number of folk that think it not acceptable and got vocal about it.
----------------------------------------AND, Sunbelt/Kerio can be configured not to log specific sources. I'm sure the best ZA can do so too. I see no more flashing nor records unless it would try to do something not permitted.
WCG
----------------------------------------Please help to make the Forums an enjoyable experience for All! [Edit 1 times, last edit by Sekerob at Aug 3, 2007 1:20:37 PM] |
||
|
|
twilyth
Master Cruncher US Joined: Mar 30, 2007 Post Count: 2130 Status: Offline Project Badges:
|
Need no back up.... it's the number of folk that think it not acceptable and got vocal about it. I rest my case. |
||
|
|
|