Internet connection sharing - client attempts connections frequently

[fenstrat]

With ICS the client computer attempts to make an internet connection every 10 or 15 minutes randomly. Is there a way to only allow the internet connection for certain programs like internet explorer/outlook?

Thanks

 

[m4tty]

Hi do you have a firewall, if so the settings will need to reflect which programs need access.

 

[fenstrat]

I have the built in xp firewall, can I do it with this? I don't have it enabled right now, using a hardware based firewall through RRAS.

 

[Dollar]

Have you got your mail open when this is happening? You could open mail without dialling out to simply view what is there and then at the same time have the option to check mail every x minutes.

 

[fenstrat]

No, I want it to dial when I open outlook. The problem is I'll be away from my computer for an hour or two, go to make a phone call and my computer has dialed while I was away.

 

[Dollar]

You could set your ICS up so that when sharing, other PC's can only connect by someone going to your PC and manually dialling out. It's probably not ideal, but if the problem persists, then it's going to be something on the dialup PC.

After that, get something like Spybot and/or AdAware and check your systems for spyware that may be trying to dialup.

An extremely good firewall for exactly this would be ZoneAlarm. It would actually prompt you for permission for programs to access the internet (an option when you install it). That way, you will find out both where the dial request is coming from and quite probably which PC initiated it.

 

[fenstrat]

Thanks, I have adaware on all computers but I'll give zonealarm a try, or something similar.

 

[fenstrat]

I'm pretty sure it's things like windows auto update, mcaffee viruscan and things like that just trying to do normal updates. The laptop is also part of our company environment so there are programs that attempt to run updates automatically.