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ntp triggers constant dial-ups=loads of $$$$

Kees Blokland

ntp triggers constant dial-ups=loads of $$$$
« on: February 10, 2001, 01:08:32 PM »
Dear all,

Just noticed a potential problem for all customers connected to a telco that charges you for every hickup. (talking about BT in the UK)

I was wondering why my connection stayed open all night when there was no real traffic. Turned out that the timeserver is looking up the time every 2 minutes or so.
(Yes, that's great.. simply disable it!) which triggers a dialout, which incurs lots of charges.

Maybe a small warning in the manual's about this, because I know that a 24 hr connection can set you back 25 pounds easily. That's a sure way to get a customer very upset, when you told him that his phonebill would be much lower...



for the rest, I can only join all others in singing lots of praise..


kees blokland

Charlie Brady

Re: ntp triggers constant dial-ups=loads of $$$$
« Reply #1 on: February 10, 2001, 08:46:40 PM »
Kees Blokland wrote:
 
> Just noticed a potential problem for all customers connected
> to a telco that charges you for every hickup. (talking about
> BT in the UK)

Hi Kees,

After discussion with you off line, it appears that your problem is with the LRP device which you are using as your gateway. It does not ignore NTP request packets, as the e-smith software would do when operating in server-gateway mode.

Thanks for your report and subsequent investigation.

Regards

Charlie

Charly Kreil

Re: ntp triggers constant dial-ups=loads of $$$$
« Reply #2 on: February 26, 2003, 02:52:54 PM »
Oh, f***! (fish),
I should have read this earlier. Now I got a 700 Euro invoice.
And it is nothing typically British. It is from Deutsche Telekom.
Now ntp is turned off.

Regards Charly

Kees Blokland

Re: ntp triggers constant dial-ups=loads of $$$$
« Reply #3 on: February 26, 2003, 09:53:03 PM »
It is not the fault of ntp, I found out later.
Ntp just takes advantage of the fact that the line is activated.

The real cause is most likely a windows box dialing home all the time.
Start looking for and disble spyware.
look at www.lavasoft.de for a start..

Also make sure you don't have your webmail activated, because that will also trigger dialups. ( set it to 2 hours or more intervals.).

Ed Form

Re: ntp triggers constant dial-ups=loads of $$$$
« Reply #4 on: February 27, 2003, 03:22:41 AM »
Kees Blokland wrote:
>
> It is not the fault of ntp, I found out later.
> Ntp just takes advantage of the fact that the line is
> activated.
>
> The real cause is most likely a windows box dialing home all
> the time. Start looking for and disble spyware.
> look at www.lavasoft.de for a start..
>
> Also make sure you don't have your webmail activated, because
> that will also trigger dialups. ( set it to 2 hours or more
> intervals.).

Look also for hardware that thinks it's entitled to dial home. TCP/IP print servers are one particular class of beast that caught me out.

Ed Form