Topic: Any local network/winsock/etc diagnosing tools?

[Cobra951]

I'm pretty sure the problems I'm having with my ISP are theirs and not mine (except they're pissing me off) but I want to verify that everything is kosher on my PC.  Can anyone rcommend any tools or procedures to check up on things like protocols and winsock.  All this stuff has always been just this side of magic to me, and a little spoonfeeding would be appreciated.   

[scottws]

No clue but I once heard that 3rd party software firewalls replace the Microsoft WINSOCK client.  You run Kerio Personal Firewall, don't you?

[Cobra951]

Does it?  What is winsock exactly?  Yes, I use Kerio/Tiny Personal Firewall v. 2.xx.  It does exactly what it needs to do, perfectly, and nothing more.  It sits at a lower level than the protocols, making it unhackable via the protocols.  You need to make a mistake/get duped in order to compromise it.  Would that require replacing the MS winsock client?

[scottws]

Lengthy, but interesting.

But yeah I mean unless you manually messed around with the TCP/IP settings in the registry, you shouldn't have to check into the status of your TCP/IP protocol.  But there is a TCP/IP optimizer out there that you might try to either optimize settings, or reset them to the default (in case they did get changed by some app).

[Cobra951]

That was an interesting read.  Those years are recent history to me.  One place I worked adopted Novell as the way to link all the PCs together.  Before that, we passed floppy disks around.  The one alarming bit for the present is that XP pre-SP2 can potentially lose all net connectivity if a certain buggy extension gets uninstalled.

I'm not worried about problems with my hardware or software anymore, or even their modem.  If you read my thread in the Help section, you know I traced the problem to a "Red" status on the RR network affecting Cinci and Mason since the 25th.  I found the link to the net status page on the North Carolina RR page, after searching for terms like "roadrunner outages" and "roadrunner network problems", and weeding out all the years-old crap.  I figured it was their fault, but I hate not knowing for sure.  Peace of mind is essential.

[WindAndConfusion]

The only thing I know about how Windows works is that it doesn't.

What problems are you having that you need to debug Winsock?

[Xessive]

I have this little WinSock fixer utility that basically resets WinSock if it has been altered.

I generally only use it as a last resort or if I get a suggestion that WinSock is somehow involved in a network error I'm getting. I haven't really needed it much with XP (since it does pretty much everything automatically), but back in the days Win98 it came in real handy.

[Cobra951]

The only thing I know about how Windows works is that it doesn't.

What problems are you having that you need to debug Winsock?

Nothing, really.  Before I learned for sure that my crippled internet is my ISP's fault, I wanted to test every conceivable local reason for it.  No need anymore.