<font color=pink>Lately I have been having trouble staying connected to the internet through my modem. This never used to be a problem until I installed SP2...AOL told me that a firewall might be disrupting the connection (it literally disconnects every 20min because it was "interrupted").

So I went and turned off the windows firewall and am gonna see if it helps. I know there are "exceptions" to where you want the firewall and I had AOL checked, but it doesn't help [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Does anyone else know what it might be if not that?</font>

I know there is a similar issue here in Australia with users of Telstra Bigpond. Bigpond use a Heartbeat Authentication which basically pings your computer every 15 minutes. if a firewall blocks the ping it drops the connection.

This required a few people to open a specific port in there firewall to allow this heartbeat through.

Not sure if its the same with AOL but thats what has happened down here.

I have had the same problem since installing SP2 :/ thought it was just my system going crazy again...

[ 10-20-2004, 01:08 AM: Message edited by: Stormymystic ]

<font color=pink>Well I took off the firewall and my connection has been steady for the last hour...think that fixed it</font>

it was probably a heartbeat. Ask AOL which port there authentication uses and open that in your firewall. That way you can have the firewall on and a steady internet connection.

Great! Windows firewall is crappy anyway...

I knew there were still problems with SP2. I'm not installing it before another 6 months or so... [img]tongue.gif[/img]