Road Runner - Bittorrent=spammer?

TNGTony

Unashamed Bengal Fan
Original poster
Sep 7, 2003
10,041
803
Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Okay folks, for the second time in three weeks Road Runner has cut off my internet access. (Send and receive lights blinking on my modem telling me there is a problem). When I call RR and I actually get to speak to a human being (this is a chore in itself) they tell me that my account has been suspended (or modem "tuned") because "one of your computers is infected by a virus and is sending out thousands of infected e-mails." The message goes on, but this is a written statement that the tech support people are telling me.

I have thoroughly checked my computer using McAfee, Symantec, AVG, Ad Aware, SpyBot and a Trojan seeker. All come up that my computer is clean. I am using signatures from 11/8.

After the first time my service was suspended I added a traffic meter to my computer that would keep hourly logs of network traffic in and out from my computer. I also enabled my router logs to see what was going on with that.

Other than the standard traffic by Bittorrent I saw nothing going on on the two days before my service was suspended for the second time.

I cannot get to a human being on RR that can see passed their computer screen to answer the simple question: Can the network spam detector at RR be triggered by the kind of traffic generated by Bittorrent?

I am afraid to have my service restored until I find an answer to that question because if for some reason I do have a hidden nasty somewhere I don't want to be cut off for-ever.

If I find that this kind of traffic definitely does not affect the spam detector I'll wipe the hard drives and re-install clean on a reformatted drive with new installs of software. But I don't want to use this "nuclear option" unless I get an answer to my question.

So... anyone have any ideas?

I'm using my work computer so i will not be able to respond until tomorrow before work.

See ya
Tony
 
Well, my first suggestion would be to post your question in an actual RoadRunner forum like Road Runner forum - dslreports.com broadband community . Short of that there's nothing you can really do till you're connected to your provider again. Then when you suspect the phantom data issue to be occurring again - open the Processes tab of the Windows Task Manager. Left click CPU twice, and see which executable(s) is/are using your computer at that moment in time. If you see one you don't recognize, highlight it and click End Process. If that stops the modem lights from blinking, then consider using a utility like HiJackThis to isolate and eliminate it.

//greg//
 
The modem lights blinking in this case is RR telling me my service has been cut off!

There were no processes running ever that I did not recognize for the second cut-off.

The network traffic was heavy because of bit-torrent. Not spam and not unintentional.

The question is: does this type of traffic trigger the spam filter at RR? Has anyone else suffered from this?

Thanks
 
Well, this is a satellite internet forum Tony. And every satellite modem I've ever used in the last 35 years worked the same - that is, blinking TX and RX lights indicate throughput. Never seen one where they blinked when the other end went offline. That said, I've never seen a RR modem either. That's why I suggested you might be able to take advantage of more actual RR experience on a RR forum.

//greg//
 
Greg,

Sorry to intrude on your forum. I see it listed as Broadband Internet > The Broadband Forum. I did not see where is said it was strictly for satellite delivered broadband.

I was not clear and I apologize for that. The send receve lights on my modem are blinking in unison at at regular intervals (once a second). The "on line" light is off. This is the way that RR lets you know there is a problem and your service is suspended.
______________
The question I am asking is: Can Bittorrent or other p2p software activity be interpreted by RR spam detectors as spam e-mails?
----------------------

Everything else in my post is background information.

Thanks

See ya
Tony
 
BitTorrent and p2p services do not use the same ports (Normally port 25 for smtp) so I doubt they could be confused as such.
 

FiOS & Actiontec

hughesnet and a home network?