Don't be quick to blame LnS where you encounter a connection problem!

I have been using LnS for a long time without any problems apart from a minor one, due to a lack of understanding, when switching to Phant0m's rule-set.

I have been using both beta drivers, and the LnS service beta since they were available, also with no problems. Recently, I upgraded to the LnS 2.05p3 pre-beta by installing over the top of my previous 2.05p2 + beta drivers, again with no problems.

I recently had to re-install XP, and with it did a fresh installation of the new 2.05p3 pre-beta release (which contains both beta drivers, the beta LnS service, and the latest version of LnS itself). After installation, I was having intermittent problems surfing the Internet, and sneding/receiving e-mail. It seemed to work 30% of the time, but failed 70% of the time. I was quick to blame the new release of LnS 2.05p3 pre-beta, but after I investigated, it turned out to only be a problem when using Phant0m's rule-set.

Further investigation revealed that my ISP had recently changed the DNS servers used, and this caused Phant0m's rule-set to block the requests to these servers. The rule in question is the "DNS-Allowed-1" which needs to be configured for the IP addresses used by the DNS servers.

As soon as I had changed this rule to the new IP addresses, my Internet connection was back to normal.

So...., the moral of the story is that while it's sometimes easy to blame an app (LnS in this case) for a problem, further investigation can often reveal this initial balem is wrong and more due to frustration.

LnS is good is good to you. Spare a thought for LnS, and be good to her!

 

Hi Defenestration

It is great you figured it out, however I am curious, when the DNS servers changed, and you started experiencing connecting issues, there should have been blockings & logging to the Look ‘n’ Stop ‘Log’ screen when receiving the DNS incoming packets. Therefore I would speculate that you had disabling logging to ‘Log’ screen for the rule ‘Block : All other packets’, I don’t want to think that you would remove blocking or disabled the rule ‘Block : All other packets’ in the rule-set. And if this isn’t a hit, then you probably had some improperly modifications/additions that intercepted and blocked without logging…


There are some ISPs that do change DNS IP addresses little more then we would like, so this comes down to a solution, and solution would be for Frederic to consider implementing capabilities for rules to apply by hostname and not limited to just IP addresses, this will be solution for other services that constantly changing IP address, like E-mail services..