BOINC network activity
3 Jun 2006 15:25:11 UTC
Topic 191313
(moderation:
I recently updated BOINC to 5.4.9. I've noticed that BOINC seems to be pinging constantly. Actually it's probably not pinging, but it is contacting someone or something about once every second. My little ZoneAlarm taskbar icon shows this activity as if it were pulsing. ZA shows that it is BOINC, and if I stop BOINC the taskbar icon for ZA returns to normal. What is this activity and why does it need to be so frequent? With the way things are these days on the internet, I'm absolutely paranoid about someone using my machine for nefarious purposes. This kind of activity, while probably legit, doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling. Anything I can do to stop it?
mdawson
BOINC network activity
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It is normal for Boinc to do this, as it is talking to itself.
BOINC Wiki
BOINC and BOINC Manager talk
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BOINC and BOINC Manager talk over TCP/IP. There is no data going out the network. If you installed as a service, you can shut down the manager and see that the talking stops. It sends data back and forth every second.
RE: BOINC and BOINC Manager
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That may be true of BOINC and I am generally comfortable with BOINC operating on my machine, but how can I tell if any other program is transmitting or sending data when BOINC has completely overrun Zone Alarm's little taskbar icon? I'm not aware of BOINC doing this before I upgraded to 5.4.9, so I have to wonder what is so darned important that BOINC needs to know if my machine is online every second.
mdawson
It's not BOINC checking its
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It's not BOINC checking its online status, it is Boinc.exe and Boincmgr.exe "talking" to eachother on port 31416 to show a realtime representation of the results being crunched. When you open Boinc Manager, go to the Tasks tab, you'll see the crunching happening in realtime, the crunchtime changing per second and the percentages change each second.
Zone Alarm shows this activity, as it is done through port 31416. It's more like a problem with Zone Alarm than it is with BOINC. But knowing that you can install BOINC as a service and then close down Boinc Manager (the GUI) is a good work-around. Or ask ZA to fix it.
I am not using ZA, but Sygate 5.6 .. I don't see it flicker all the time. So it really depends on the software firewall as well.
RE: I am not using ZA,
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Hmmm... Ok. I think I see now what has happened. When I upgraded to 5.4.9 I apparently didn't install it as a service, which I think my previous installation was. Thanks for the tip!
mdawson