More often than not, these update issues are due to ActiveX traffic coming through your router. Indeed, it is that simple. There is an easy way to fix this so that you will not have to deal with the various error messages anymore and your computer will get the necessary (and important) updates that it needs. Windows Update is no joke. This has to happen. These updates are important for security and functionality. This tutorial will guide you through a quick method to allow ActiveX traffic. Please note that the admin interface of your router may or may not offer this option. It can also be that the feature is listed under a different name.

Internet Explorer 8 in particular requires ActiveX components to function properly. Disabling IE8 will not solve the problem nor will updating to IE9. You can specify firewall settings for software and hardware to allow appropriate ActiveX filtering, but this is more advanced. Here, we will be using the open source router firmware DD-WRT. This is a user-friendly firewall solution that takes the technical aspects out of more mundane functions.

Navigate to your router’s IP address in any web browser. You may not know your router IP address and you can open a command prompt to find it. Press Win+R and type “cmd” or open command prompt from the Start Menu.

In the command prompt window, type “ipconfig” and press enter. The IP address will be listed under “Default Gateway”. This should be your router’s IP address. Now just enter this IP address (yours, not the one above) in the URL bar of the chosen web browser.

Click the Security tab and find the checkbox labeled “Filter ActiveX”. Uncheck the box and this will clear the filtering and allow ActiveX traffic through.

After doing this, a new window will present. In this window, click the button labeled “Apply Settings”. This should do the trick. Close your web browser and attempt Windows Update again.

If you see an image like the screenshot above, then you have succeeded in clearing the impediment to Windows Update. Every router is different and will handle this change in a different manner. This is by no means a blanket solution, but it is one that works in most cases.

Another simple fix for Windows Update errors is to disable automatic updates and update the recommended updates manually. If they all update successfully, you can turn on automatic updates again and it should continue to work. If, on the other hand, this does not work, identify the update(s) that did not install and contact Microsoft Help regarding the issue. Generally they will help you fix it for free and Windows Update will work normally once again.

The problem with this however, is that although you can quickly and easily configure a new router with basic settings, the start-up wizards usually don’t mention anything about wireless encryption. To be fair some of the top commercial models do, but the basic routers you can pick up for home usage simply ignore encryption because it can be confusing to people with little computer knowledge, and they want to make it as easy as possible. This can be dangerous, as leaving your Wi-Fi connection open and unencrypted could leave you open to all kinds of attacks.

Lets take a situation where someone has bought a new router, plugged it into their Internet connection and started surfing the web using the wireless connection, without setting up any encryption. If this computer user lives in a block of apartments or perhaps in a built up area, the coverage of the router’s wireless transmitter will easily penetrate outside the confines of the home. It’s even possible that houses across a fairly wide street could pick up the signals. Certainly those people living in the immediate vicinity, or in a parked car outside, would be able to simply log on and use the Internet. (You can try it out yourself with a free software like TekWifi)

The computer user may be blissfully unaware that others are using his Internet connection. Or, he might be aware and simply not care. The truth is, this is a dangerous practice. Wi-Fi hijackers may not just be able to use the Internet, with a little networking knowledge; someone could hack into the user’s computer and steal information or vandalize information. If the user keeps passwords or bank details on his laptop, these could be compromised and used to steal money or commit fraud. Personal files, family photographs and emails could all be lifted directly from an unsuspecting computer user with an open Wi-Fi connection, all without them knowing about it. You wouldn’t let strangers walk into your home and start looking about, so why let them into your computer network?

Not only that, but if someone else has access to your Internet connection, they could commit crimes such as fraud, or download illegal content. Technically you could be held liable for this, as an ISP might track illegal activities to your connection. Even though you are not responsible for the crimes, you could end up being asked some serious questions by the authorities. Be safe and set up encryption on your Wi-Fi today!

Check out our guide Find Out Who Is Surfing On Your Wireless Network to check if someone else is using your wi-fi network.

For a long time, WEP was considered to be an extremely good method of encrypting wireless connections. The acronym simply means Wired Equivalent Privacy. Originally it was only available in 64-bit configuration, but soon after 128-bit and even 256-bit encryption became available. Entering a 64-bit WEP Wi-Fi key was as simple as choosing a ten character hexadecimal number. Each character represented 4 bits, making 40 bits in total, and then 24 bits were added to complete the 64-bit key. WEP however, was proved to have many flaws mainly involving the short key size, which were relatively easy to crack. WEP also does not provide for security against altered packets – a process where packets of information is intercepted by an intruder and then altered before sending them back, making it look like the intruder is valid user.

These days, WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) and WPA2 have completely taken over from the old WEP encryption methods. You’ll probably still find WEP available on most routers, but it’s being phased out and someday it probably won’t be available at all. The main advantage WPA has over WEP is that it employs a powerful new feature called TKIP, or rather Temporal Key Integrity Protocol. TKIP is 128-bit, but instead of the key being static, it generates a new key for every packet of information that is sent, meaning it is a lot more secure. WPA also integrates a method of message integrity checks, used to defeat network attackers intercepting and altering data packets. WPA2 goes even further and replaces TKIP with CCMP. CCMP is an AES based encryption method that is much stronger even than TKIP.

In the home, you’ll probably want to use an encryption method called WPA-Personal. This is sometimes also called WPA-PSK. PSK stands for Pre-Shared Key, and is designed for home users and small offices where a server is not required for authenticating messages. It works by having each wireless device such as a laptop or smart phone authenticating directly with the wireless access point using the same key. Offices and large buildings may employ WPA-Enterprise. You can’t generally use this without a complicated authentication server set-up, but it does provide additional security.

Both WPA-SPK and WPA-Enterprise are available in WPA2, meaning even home users can now benefit from AES encryption over their Wi-Fi connections. All of these methods can transmit data at maximum speed, and you won’t notice any speed differences between each type of encryption. Therefore the recommendation is to use the best encryption you can. This means going for WPA2-PSK where you can in a home environment. There are new and more exotic types of Wi-Fi encryption becoming available, but for now even advanced users will find WPA2 more than adequate for most security applications.

If you are using wireless connections, you may want to check your router to make sure that it does not use encryption that can easily be cracked by users with the right toolset.

Your first step will be to buy yourself a wireless transmitter that is suitable to act as a repeater. Most transmitters have the function to do this these days, so you should find one quite easily. It’s always recommended to buy a repeater that is the same make as your existing router to avoid compatibility problems, but this is optional and most makes will talk to others.

Once you’ve unboxed your repeater and switched it on, you’re going to want to log into your existing router. Do this by logging in the way you usually do, and enter your username and password. Now, all routers are different, but the setting you’re looking for is the SSID name, or the wireless network name. It may be under wireless settings. You need to note the existing name, or change the name to something that means something to you. You should also at this point check the mode or speed your wireless is operating at, and choose “auto” or the fastest speed your router will allow.

The next step is to check the security options. For the purposes of this tutorial, we’re going to use “none”, but you should really use WEP or WPA2-Personal as your security, that way unauthorized people can’t log onto your network. If you do set up security, which is strongly advised, you’ll have to set up a password. You’ll need this for your repeater too, so write it down and don’t forget it.

Now you need to find a section that may be called “Wireless Repeating”, again each router is different, so you may need to search around until you find it. It should still be under the wireless settings section, and shouldn’t be too difficult to find. There will probably be a check box where you need to enable wireless repeating, as it’s not usually turned on as standard, and then most routers have two options. The first will be to use this router as a wireless repeater, and the other will be to use this router as a base station. As this is our main router, we’re going to select to use it as a base station. At this point you’ll probably going to need to enter the MAC address of the repeater you’re going to use. So look on the back of your new repeater and you should find a sticker with the MAC address. The MAC address is a unique hardware address of the repeater and will be 12 characters long. Enter this number into the router setup screen. Click “apply” or “save” and you’ve successfully set up your router to act as a repeater base station.

Configuring your Repeater

In part 1, we successfully set up our existing Internet router to act as a base station for wireless repeating. Remember, we’re doing this so we can extend our wireless Internet connection to other parts of the house or even into the back yard.

The next step is to configure our repeater so that it talks to the base station and repeats the signal. First of all, you’ll probably need to connect your computer to the back of your repeater using an Ethernet cable. This is because we haven’t configured anything on it yet, so we need some method of communication with the device.

You’ll have to read your device instructions to find out how to connect to your new repeater, but usually it’s just a case of using an Internet browser with a default username and password. You’ll find all these details in your instruction booklet. Once you’ve logged into the repeater, just as before with the base unit you’re going to need to find the wireless network setup screen.

You need to set up the wireless network with the same SSID name, or wireless network name, as your base unit. For the mode, or speed of the network, you should again choose the fastest speed your network can communicate at, or just choose auto. Finally, you need to set your repeater to have the same form of security as your base station. We’re choosing “none” for the time being, but later on you can come back to these settings and choose WEP or WPA-2. Once you’ve done all these things, you can save your settings and go back to the home screen of your repeater setup.

Just as in the base station setup, you now need to find the setting called “wireless repeating function” or something similar. You’ll need to check the box to turn on wireless repeating, but instead of choosing base station, this time we’re going to choose “wireless repeater”. At this stage, you’re going to need to give your repeater an IP address on your network. If your router is 10.0.0.2 (for example), you might want to give your repeater the next number in line, say 10.0.0.3. This will depend on your network and how many computers you already have set up. If in doubt, use a high number that isn’t likely to be already in use, such as 10.0.0.240.

The next step will be to type in the base station MAC address. In the same way the base station needs to know the hardware address of your repeater, your repeater needs to know the MAC address of the base station. Again, you can find this address on the back of your router. It will be 12 digits long.

Now we have all the information needed for our repeater set-up, we’re going to click on “apply” or “save”, and you’ve successfully set up your repeater. All you need to do now is move the repeater to somewhere where you want to extend the range of your network. Remember, it has to be within range of the base station as well.

The Ipconfig Command Basics

The ipconfig command gets its name from the acronym IP (Internet Protocol) and a shortened term for configure. Understanding this served as a mnemonic device for me when I was first learning networking. It is used to display and configure your connection to the Internet. This tutorial will focus on the display and what that means.

Deciphering the Information

To get to ipconfig, we have to get to the command line.

• Click Start, click Run, type in “cmd” & hit enter.
• Type in ipconfig & hit enter. (you can use ipconfig /all for detailed information)

You will get a screen that looks like this.

To find your router’s IP number, look next to “Default Gateway” (listed last). For a mnemonic, think of the router as your gateway to the Internet or another network. To find your computers’ IP number, look next to “IP Address”. Do not worry about the other information like the subnet mask.

In this case, the computer number is 192.168.1.4 while 192.168.1.1 is the router number. It is common for 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.0.1 to be the router’s IP address. There are a few reasons for this, which were covered in a previous article.

Ping Your Router (Default Gate)

We are using the ipconfig command so that we can get the IP number of the router. As discussed at the end of the last article on the ping command, we want to ping our router. If we can ping it, then it should be working properly.

To do this, type in ping and the router (default gateway) number as shown.

Some Possible Problems

Consider a case where the connection to the Internet seems down. If you cannot ping the router, or the ipconfig command says the default gateway is 0.0.0.0, then the problem may be in the router. The first thing to check is whether the router is on and everything is plugged in. The next thing to try would be to either restart the computer or to try and ping the router from another computer. From here, you may want to call your ISP’s help line and let them know what you have tried. An experienced user may restart the router; I have found that mine needs this from time to time. For a beginner, it is better to get some help. You will learn from the experience.

There is a possibility that your router may be failing. That has happened to me once before. Fortunately, a friend helped me troubleshoot the device, so stay in touch with networking pals. The culprit may likely have been heat from a lack of proper ventilation. Be sure your router has proper air flow. While they may run warm, if they are hot to the touch, it may be bad for the device (check your manual or consult your manufacturer).

ipconfig Command Line Options

Ipconfig has several command line options that you can utilize. You can display all of them with the command ipconfig /?. Here is a short selection of the most common uses.

• ipconfig /release – Releases all IPv4 addresses (requires DHCP)
• ipconfig /renew – Renews all IPv4 addresses (requires DHCP)
• ipconfig /flushdns – Flushes the DNS cache

Linux & Mac Use Ifconfig & Route -n

For those running Linux or are on a Mac, the commands to use are ifconfig and route -n. Is ifconfig identical to ipconfig? No. The ifconfig command will show you your computer’s IP number and other information. You just type in the command, ifconfig, into the terminal to find out information about how your computer connects to the Internet. To get your router’s IP number, you use the route command with a -n (netstat -r should work too). Both are shown in the screen shots. Make sure you use lowercase letter; the commands are case sensitive. (Side Note: Linux also has a iwconfig command for wireless specific tweaking (e.g. frequency).)

Just a note about the Mac ifconfig command. We are using it to view network settings, which is fine. In doing research for this article, I read that it is not advised to use this to change settings. From what I read, it works, but with possible complications.

Closing

We use ipconfig to find the router’s IP number. Once you have that, you can ping the router to test if it is responsive. The problem with the ping command is that, while it is fast, is doesn’t give you a lot of information. For that, we use the tracert command, which will be covered next.

Every website, router, and computer has an IP address. It is how computers uniquely identify themselves on a network or on the Internet. Typically, in a home network, your router assigns one to your computer. How does it make sure the IP address on your home computer is not the same as one on the Internet? There actually is a list of numbers that is reserved for private use (home, office, corporate, etc.). They are never used for a public website. While the details of how IP numbers are used is intricate, the ranges of reserved numbers are straight forward:

• 10.0.0.0 to 10.255.255.255
• 172.16.0.0 to 172.31.255.255
• 192.168.0.0 to 192.168.255.255

Notice how the last section starts with 192.168.0.0 and that looks a lot like the 192.168.1.1 router address. It may sound strange, but the 192.168.0.0 is actually used to refer to a group of computers. It is OK if that seems odd or does not seem to make sense. The important thing to recognize is that 192.168.1.1 was chosen because it is a low number in this special range. Your computer’s IP number, given to it by the router, will be similar. It should be something like 192.168.1.x (x is a number between 2 & 255).

The nice thing about this convention is that you can memorize this number one for many routers. It may work for every router you ever own. It also should work with the routers of family and friends. This is useful for configuring routers and trouble shooting networks.

Using the number, 192.168.1.1, is actually an easy way to configure your router. For most modern home routers you can just type it into your browser. A configuration page should come up. What it will look like will change from manufacturer to manufacturer. Some may require a username and router password to see anything, others will at least tell you if you are connected to the Internet or not. If you cannot connect to a few different sites, you may be able to check here to see if your Internet connection is down. (Once I typed it in and nothing came up: someone unplugged the router.) Be sure to read your router’s manual before changing any settings. You probably need to log-in to do any real damage, though.

Important note: If your router does not require a password to edit core settings, you have a serious security problem. Please contact your Internet Service Provider for help and instructions on how address that issue. Ghacks has a guide to secure your wireless router that you should take into consideration. It is very easy for someone to change the settings on your router if there is no password protecting in.

Do all routers use this number to identify themselves? No. Some routers will default to a different number. There is no rule or law stating that it has to be 192.168.1.1; it is just a convention. If you look on the bottom of your router, or its manual, you will usually find out what that number is. Typically it is a 192.168.x.x number, but 172.x.x.x or 10.x.x.x are possibilities too. It would be very strange for it to be something else. The IP number on your computer should still be similar to the router’s number (the number before the first decimal point has to be the same). (Sometimes routers displays domain names instead, like speedport.ip which they resolve internally to the IP, meaning you can enter both the IP or domain name to load the router configuration)

Some other common numbers are 192.168.0.1 (ex. D-Link & Netgear) and 192.168.2.1 (according to 19216811.net). While 192.168.1.1 is often mentioned as a Linksys convention, it is used by other brands such as Speedtouch. If you are using a router from an Internet Service Provider, it may actually be made by Linksys. Cisco uses 192.168.1.1 for some of its routers (such as those for small business), but that is no surprise as they own Linksys. Here is a list of some more examples.

One of the easiest ways to find out the IP address of your router is to open a command prompt (by pressing Ctrl-R, typing cmd and then the enter key) and enter the command ipconfig in it. Locate the Default Gateway entry, which in most cases is your router’s IP address.

The attack was dreamt up by security expert Sam Kamkar who demonstrated at the Black Hat hackers conference a website exploiting common shortcomings in a router to reveal it’s real-world location.

He tricked the router into believing the request for it’s ID information was coming from the connected PC, not from the Internet.  He then used the revealed MAC address with a geo-location feature in Firefox to interrogate the database Google gathered when it made its Street View photographs.

The data, which was controversially gathered, linked the MAC addresses of routers to GPS co-ordinates.  “This is geo-location gone terrible,” said Mr Kamkar during his presentation. “Privacy is dead people. I’m sorry.”

Mikko Hyponnen, senior researcher at F Secure called the demonstration “very interesting” adding that such a technique could be used for “stalking or targeted attacks against an individual”.

“The fact that databases like Google Streetview’s Mac-to-Location database or the Skyhook database can be used in these attacks just underlines how much responsibility companies that collect such data have to safeguard it correctly.” said Mr Hypponen

In 2005, Mr Kamkar created a work that helped him gain more than 1 million MySpace friends in a single day.

Now, the Fon 2.0 router is out, which allows you to download to a pendrive, external hard drive, upload to Youtube, all that fun stuff, but without having your PC or laptop turned on! Just set up a Youtube upload, add some torrent files, switch off your laptop, and the download/upload goes on. There are tons of cool apps built into the firmware, as the screencast about it says, it’s like a mini linux in there.

The price is EUR 50, which is roughly $65 now. Compared to the price of the old Fon this is pricey, but not compared to other top of the line routers which can’t do half as much. I purchased three routers pooling with my friends for about $10 each, and I have been using it since, it really is a great pieve of hardware, so I can’t wait to get my hands on the new one. Even if you don’t need these functions check it out, you will be helping out a great cause. I don’t travel as much, but one of my friends spends all his time doing so and he finds Fon routers everywhere in the World!

Port forwarding can be configured in the router or traffic controlling device. It basically consists of telling the router route to send incoming traffic to a specific computer by specifying a port and IP address.

One of easiest ways to check if a port is properly forwarded is to use an online port checker like the one provided by uTorrent. To verify the port forwarding open the following url in your web browser http://www.utorrent.com/testport.php?port=1337 and change the number at the end to the port that you want to forward.

The script will check if the port is forwarded properly:

The above screen is displaying that the port forwarding has been properly configured. It will display that an error has occured. The port forwarding test can be repeated after adjusting the configuration settings.

Simple Port Forwarding is a portable software that tries to lessen the knowledge that is needed to configure port forwarding in a computer network. Port Forwarding on the other hand is only a issue of the computers connect to a router that establishes the connection to the Internet.

It basically tells the router where to send information that are being received on a specific port. The software currently supports 197 different routers and the software developer provides the means to suggest new routers if the current router is not available in the list.

Among the support routers are several popular brands like Zyxel, Belkin, Netgear or LinkSys. All the user needs to do is pick his router from the list of available ones and enter the username and password which are used to connect to the admin interface.

Simple Port Forwarding will automatically enter the default values which can be used if the values have not been changed.

The port forwarding software comes with a database of 677 programs that can be automatically added. This includes applications like Yahoo Messenger, Telnet and Teamspeak but mainly games like Age of Conan, Stalker or World of Warcraft.

If the application is not in the list it has to be added manually. All that needs to be done by the user is to pick a name, select a connection type and the start and end port.

The information can then be updated in the router by clicking on the Update Router button. The main advantage of Simple Port Forwarding is the interface and the database that contains lots of popular programs.

The UPNP Mapper, or UPNP Router Port Mapping Tool, provides a set of tools to display and configure router related Universal Plug and Play settings. It does that by directly implementing the UPNP protocol with direct sockets meaning it does not rely on the operating system to provide the information but its own functions.

Probably the most interesting feature of the software program is the ability to scan the network for UPNP devices and display the port mapping info of those devices in its interface. UPNP Port Mapper can also map or unmap ports on a discovered device.

The tool was tested on Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista and should run fine on computers running those operating systems. The software is portable and uses a single executable file with a size of 204 Kilobytes. Some routers, especially older ones are reported to work incorrectly or not at all with that software which is usually caused by a faulty implementation of UPNP in the router.

The Netgear WGR614L Open Source Wireless-G Router is compatible to well known firmwares like Tomato and DD-WRT with several others in the making. You might be asking about the benefits of running an Open-Source router in comparison to one that is not. It all boils down to something that gets updated regularly with new features versus something that does not get updated anymore after some time has passed since the initial release.

Netgear seem to have at least one person on board that is proficient with today’s Internet. They have created a community website just for their new line of Open Source routers which perfectly catches the latest Internet trend: Social community.

The website contains blogs, a news sections, downloads, tutorials and a nicely populated forum that is slowly picking up pace. While the Netgear WGR614L Open Source Wireless-G Router is clearly aimed at Linux users Windows users can obviously use the router as well. It retails for a reasonable price of $69 and got mostly positive comments at Amazon and other online shops that sell it.

Now you can stop wondering, since Routerpasswords has all the answers. Just select your router, click find password and it will list all default user names and passwords for the routers of that company.

This is an immensely helpful tool if you’re trying to work out someone else’s router problem, or your own, in case you’ve lost the manual. I’m afraid if you’ve changed your password from the default one this won’t work, but then shame on you for not remembering!

Found via Emergingtechs

Port Forwarding can be described as a way to tell your router to send specific traffic to a specific computer inside the network. For bittorrent it would mean that the bittorrent ports that are used are forwarded to the network device that is running your bittorrent client.

Bittorrent is however not the only possible application. You could forward requests for port 21 to a home ftp server or requests for port 80 to a web server.

The Port Forwarding Tester tests if this is setup correctly. This can be done by simply entering the computers IP and the port that you want to check. The port forwarding script scans for your IP by default, you only need to change it if you want to test a different computer that has a different IP.

If the result is that the port is blocked at that IP Port Forwarding is not setup properly. A great site to find out how you setup port forwarding for your router is the website Port Forward which has instructions for hundreds of routers.

Read More:

Port Forwarding Tester
Port Forwarding Configurations

The freeware requires no installation and does not change the system, just run it using the windows run command. Every user that is logged on can use the application, that´s right even guests can use it. Another great tool that uses a gui is Currports. Just follow the link if you like it.

Update: The developer website is no longer available. We have uploaded the latest version of Open Ports Scanner to our own servers. Be advised though that it has not been updated for a long time, and that you may experience issues with the program because of this. We suggest you download CurrPorts instead.

The program lists all open ports on startup. This did not work correctly under a 64-bit Windows test system. Only the protocol and local port were displayed on the system, and not process names, IDs or ports. It is therefor clear that the program is either incompatible with 64-bt editions of Windows, or with newer versions of Microsoft’s operating system.

Connections and processes can be terminated and exported for further analysis. The settings allow you to configure the program to automatically refresh the connection list and ports. If you do not configure that, you are left with manually refreshing the listings.

You can download Open Ports Scanner 1.2 with a click on the following link: Open Ports Scanner (6)

Those people normally get the wireless router up and running and forget / don´t know about the security risks involved. If the router is not thoroughly secured others might use it to surf the web itself and do things far worse than that. It´s basically a free connection to the internet (and probably your pc as well).

The informit.com article Home Network Router Security Secrets gives advice how to reduce the security risk. Its 11 chapters address each a certain security risk and give tips on how to avoid or reduce the risk. For example chapter one “Turn off UPnP” advises you to turn of the universal plug and play service.

A Trojan horse or virus on a computer inside your network could use UPnP to open a hole in your router’s firewall to let outsiders in.

If you are using a wireless router make sure you read the article, it´s worth the time.

Some of the tools features include:

# filters let you choose what data and time periods to log, display, analyze, and chart
# alerts offer real-time visual and audible signals of possible intrusion attempts
# historical analysis helps you find patterns of recent intrusion attempts
# summaries condense log histories for easier review
# user-selectable charts let you spot patterns of suspicious activities.

WallWatcher Firewall and Router Analyzer

WallWatcher is available for all versions of Windows operating systems and this application analyzes log information from over 135 known routers and firewalls made and configured by different manufacturers. Among the list of compatible routers provided at the download site, are some of the most commonly used routers on the market, so it is likely that yours will be compatible. Firewall configuration is an interesting task, to say the least. When you start messing around with this, it can be a never-ending process. Beginners beware and advanced users enjoy. This application can help you find the best fit for your router’s logging format, enabling you to configure filtering properly and set immediate alerts, email alerts, historical forensics and summaries of data collected and chart filters. This gives you the upper hand to specify data that will need to be analyzed, displayed, etc.

Download WallWatcher and you will discover that the GUI is suited for advanced users, but in that sense, the interface provides simple practicality. Note that this is a .zip file with two files, the application and the library. Extract the contents of both in order to get WallWatcher functioning properly. The “Readme.txt” is going to be useful to get this application to work on your machine. If you wish to add it as a permanent feature for your computer, then attach it to the appropriate Program Files folder and set up auto-execution accordingly. Otherwise, save the .zip file and use it as needed, as there is no direct installation involved.

You can read plain-text log files while WallWatcher is running and so can other programs. There is a new log file that initiates each day at midnight collecting bandwidth reports, assuming that your router supports SNMP or includes packet lengths in log records.

Though WallWatcher is not true freeware in the traditional sense, it is currently available for free. The correct term for it is “shareware” and feedback is appreciated to perfect the software design for different operating systems and user needs.

Other features include the ability to identify BEF-series routers that have been logged while your computer has been off or hibernating. This is an obvious advantage for networks and ultimately helps to identify vulnerability issues originating from routers, or even users, rather than system firewall issues alone.
You have the option to submit log reports to DSHIELD.ORG. There is a link provided to download the program required to submit these log reports for review by the WallWatcher website, which prohibitively does not collect personal data and outsource this data. They are not interested in selling your tech-oriented soul for commercial purposes; this is just a way to improve upon the program as users take advantage of it. Only IP addresses, timestamps, and usage statistics are kept.

The reason for this so you can show then if your bandwidth quota is exceeded and you can identify hosts that are overcharging or simply making your network router issues more than you need them to be.
There is much more to the WallWatcher application and the link to the website. Examine all information carefully.