[PLUG] More insight on my ftp problem

[Rich Shepard]

  The plot thickens, or is it sickens?

  Galen looked at a raw output file of an attempt last night and saw that
requests from here to open a data port were not returned. So, I telneted to
another host here and tried from there. It worked flawlessly!

  So, mystery lovers, the problem is not on the firewall (most likely), but
on this one host. Rebooting didn't clear the problem.

  The next step, I have been advised, is to set up a hub between my firewall
and the dsl router/modem then hook my notebook to that hub and watch packets
using ethereal. The analytical protocol is to use both ncftp and ftp from
both my non-ftp-functioning workstation and the ftp-functioning workstation.
That will provide a sample size of 4 to compare. This is all well and good,
but ... I'm far over my head on this.

  Is there someone who knows network analyses and packet sniffing tools who
would be willing to work with me Saturday on running these tests and
interpreting the results? I'll download a copy of ethereal and, in my
"copious free time" (he-he!) try to learn and understand it.

  This is certainly a non-trivial challange at this point. At least it is
for me. :-)

TIA,

Rich