Monday, March 29, 2010

microsoft network monitor

oh, this is even better. i figured there must be programs for watching network activity in real time. i just googled "network monitor", and this was the first thing on the list: "microsoft network monitor". hey! i thought i'd see what it did.

what it does is exactly what i thought it did, and more. it keeps track of all the packets going in and out of the computer over a period of time. it also automatically bins these packets according to 'conversation', which is the set of [origin destination] that describes all of them. so, all the packets i send to jingping through skype fall in one bin, and all the ones she sends to me fall in another bin, for example.

last night i saw a couple of strange addresses communicating with my computer. i had turned off the browser, skype, and the chinese dictionary (which has some sort of homing beacon to beijing in it), but i still saw those packets arriving. where were they coming from? i don't know, except that one origin was in china (ningbo; 'zooz.org') and the other in australia (forgot the city). maybe my computer is a zombie! i will solve this mystery..

now, i need to learn more about packets and protocols.

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