Netopia Parental Controls ceases to exist in one month so you scored me as a new Z100G user, I just ordered it this morning.

It looks like the "annual security services subscription" is included for the first year, am I reading that right?

Also has anyone had any luck remote mounting the antennas? I ask because I'm going to find out how well the signal is from a basement room where all the Cat5 cables go.

thanks,
Jesse

J:

Yes, at least when I bought mine, the 1st year's subscription was included and I do not think that has changed.

Once you get it you do have to "activate" the subscription which can take a bit of time, then once activated you will (probably) have to download the latest level of the firmware, then the latest signature file updates.

If you are in a HURRY this is a bit tedious, but if you have a bit of time you can just patch in the router to your existing network and let it go thru the paces at it's leisure.

I can't comment on the remote antennas, other than to say the standard antennas do screw on to the back of the Z100G. You might find it better to put the Z100G on the "main floor", put a network switch/hub in the basement then run one up-link cable from the basement to the Z100G ... just a suggestion, that's what I have done and it works well.

Jim

I got the Z100G running over the last few days, it went well for the most part. it does have the power to blast through three levels and sideways about 36 feet with about 50% signal strength.

The most frustrating part was getting the network computers to see each other, they do now, my wife can even print through the WLAN with her laptop to a LAN computer we used for printing before. So I don't really see the advantage of using the printer ports on the Z100G.

I set the LAN internet availability time from 0600-2200 but the Z100G doesn't chop an active window at the 2200 cut-off. It took my son one evening on runescape to discover he could still go as late as he can get by with as long as he kept the active browser open.

One interesting thing was a constant hit on the son's computer I suspected was from a leftover P2P the older kids used. The older son and daughter used P2P until I found out then my daughter deleted it. But there was always unexplained traffic you could see on the modems, I'd ask my son, what are you doing? Why is your computer going nuts with traffic? He would say I'm not even on it! On the Z100G log the mysterious incoming traffic connected to his computer every four minutes and walked up the port numbers. So I blocked the traffic, (from cox.net). But it didn't make sense that there was what looked like only incoming traffic so I slid the firewall slider up to "High Security". That trapped traffic from the son's computer to the exact cox.net address the incoming traffic was from. We looked in runnning tasks and sure enough there was some sort of limewire.exe thinger running in spite of the fact the daughter had uninstalled Limewire. We deleted the folder the limewire.exe was in and finally got the mysterious traffic to stop. This is probably elementary to some of you but I thought it was interesting and so did my son, he learned that his computer was sending and recieving without him having a clue what was going on. Now If I can figure out why my wife's laptop is going to Israel, Amsterdam, etc without a browser open.....

From reading here the firmware updates are automatically "pushed" from zonealarm? I noticed after these few days it still has 7.5.55x.

So far I'm happy, can second the requests for a ten user option instead of having to go to 15.

Jesse

Well I figured out why the laptop was trying to go all over the place, Amsterdam, Poland, Hungary, someplace in Africa, Israel, etc.

I noticed on the Event Log that on boot up that laptop tried to hit all those IPs before a browser was opened. Those IPs hits were being blocked but they still bothered me - WHY was it DOING THAT?? I've heard a few things about Skype, which my wife uses. She had Skype set to start on boot, so I set Skype to not start on boot and watched the Event Log on boot up. It showed no IP hits blocked. After bootup I started Skype while watching the Event Log on another computer and as soon as Skype started - BOOM - a half dozen IP hits to weird places were blocked. The longer Skype was connected the more IP hits to weird places, I mean all over, even college dorms. That's weird because my wife has only a dozen or so contacts and none of them were online.

I don't know why Skype is doing this, it seems to work ok even with those out connections being blocked.

This illustrates one thing I really like about the Z100G, a guy like me can see where my computers are trying to go and who is trying to get in them. It's so interesting to see a blocked IP in the Event Log, click on it, and kinda know what is going on. Zonealarm firewall on a PC will provide some of the same information but not like the Z100G/logs/reports.

Jesse

Well.. Skype uses P2P to connect calls and I believe for its directory services... thats why after it starts up its hitting various places. If you stop too much of the traffic you wont be able to get an outbound/inward call..