ADSL / USB and Zone alarm pop-ups

[Brit Abroad]

Hi all

Apologies if this has already been asked and answered, but the search function is yet again overloaded.

I have just recently signed up for an ADSL connection which I am reasonably happy with. It is very fast (60 kB/sec download, 40KB/sec upload and ping 40-50 ms)

The connection was packaged however with a not so stable ECI USB modem which is powered via the mother board (in my case QDI Legend V with Intel 440LX chipset)

Every now and again the modem loses synch and drops the connection. It regains the synch a few seconds later and I am able to reconnect, but the problem is starting to get on my nerves !!

I have since found out that the disconnections can be due to random drops in power from the motherboard, particularly during intensive CPU use. In light of this, I today bought a mains powered USB hub and installed the modem behind that. So far so good, but I was wondering if anyone else had experience of this kind of problem ??

My second question is related to Zone Alarm which I installed today. I am receiving an awful lot of pop-up alerts of IP addresses attempting to access my computer. So many in fact (every 20 seconds or so) that I decided to turn off the alerts (they now go into a text file) Is this normal that there are so many attempts to access my machine ? (I realise most of them are probably only pings or polling, but even so, I was amazed at how often it occurs !)

Should I have left the pop-ups on ?

Thanks for your time.

Brit

[What_does_this_button_do?]

I've never heard of an ECI USB Modem being used - is this OpenWorld?

[SLF 999]

I thought that I was the only one with these problems. What you describe has been happening to me as well.
ADSL is great but if the modem is disconnected and you try to reconnect its a hell of a job to get it to get a connection. Like you I went for a powered hub, but please be aware that I tried to put other devices on the hub and started to have all sorts of problems, so now I have the modem on its own powered hub. One problem away.
With Zone alarm I seem to get a lot of pings, probes etc and have also found that some of them come from my own PC, have a look and see what your PC is called and see if you are getting alerts for it.
Im interested in this discussion so if anyone can shed light on these problems (sorry opportunities) then I would love to know the answers.
The ISP is BT and connecting via BT Openworld ADSL. The modem is Alcatel USB, with the most up to date drivers

[ 10 September 2001: Message edited by: SLF 999 ]

[Brit Abroad]

My ISP is Wanadoo (internet subsidiary of France Telecom

Wanadoo's response is that it 's nothing to do with them as they have no control over the telecoms network.

France Telecom say it's the ISP problem.....

http://www.hifocus.net/forum/smiles/smile20.gif