Home Hosting Problems

Blocked Traffic on home website

[iainmac]

Hi All,

New to this forum, guessing I should have been here a couple of years ago.

I started a small business 4 years ago, running a website from home. I did that because its completely dynamic and that's what gives us our competitive edge. I am actually a coder rather than a webmaster and so have had to learn as I went along.

I am running Tomcat accessing an Oracle DB in Windows XP Home. All on the same box along with the mailserver and an ftp server. I am using Norton Internet Security 2003 as the firewall and virus checker.

It's all been running ok for a long time. I sometimes have to reboot the computer or restart the webserver Tomcat when I add new bits.

...but now its all going horribly wrong! For the last week, roughly every 7 hours the outgoing traffic seems to get blocked. I can see the requests coming in as a little alert from Norton shoots across the screen, but it never reaches Tomcat - I can see that as I have been running Tomcat on command line to si can see whats going on.

Restarting Tomcat doesn't help, nor does switching off the firewall (just to test it) - Only rebooting the box helps. Virus checkers don't find anything.

I know I need to get this hosted and set up a better infrastructure - at least separate boxes for each server, but right now I need to fix this and I really don't know how.

Can anyone help? Is this the right forum?

Thanks,

Iain

[Matt Probert]

Perhaps your ISP is blocking you. Most ISPs provide braodband at home for domestic use only, and this does not include running a web server for public use!

Perhaps you might think about renting a dedicated server? They're not that expensive now, depending upon how much management you require - if you're happy to do almost everything you can rent a server in Canada for $99 US (!) a month.

Matt

[iainmac]

Hi - thanks for the reply.

I have been running it for years with no problems, as far as I know there is no change in the policy of my ISP.

Also if they were blocking would they do that so randemly -- and its fine when I reboot?

[Reflect]

Norton Internet Security 2003 as the firewall and virus checker

I use the corprate version of these. We have the ability to "roll back" DAT file defs. Maybe roll those back, if you have the ability, and see what happens. I think it is the firewall portion myself though. If you can disable that as a test, if you have a second defense (hardware firewall).

Take care,

Brian

[txbakers]

also make sure script blocking is turned off in Norton. That had me down for a good two weeks before I figured that one out.

[iainmac]

Thanks for the reply guys. It seems to have calmed down a bit - now only getting teh problem every 3 or 4 days - I haven't changed anything. Makes me wonder if it was some kind of denial of service attack?

[Matt Probert]

now only getting the problem every 3 or 4 days - I haven't changed anything. Makes me wonder if it was some kind of denial of service attack?

Or a problem outside of your control? Like at the ISP?

Perhaps?

Matt

[iainmac]

Well - in the end - I just moved everything to another box - only difference being an updated firewall - and so far things look good - not an ideal solution but it worked!