Is Steve Gibson's "Shields Up" still valid? It's what I always use. https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2

Does he still write all of his applications in assembly? I always loved how enthusiastic he was about his products and SpinRite was a very helpful tool back before everything I had went to SSD.

Hi Guys, yeah sorry it seems the server is kind of busy now. Cool...ill raise some limits.

The server is definitely overloaded, and at a time when most of the U. S. is either in bed or thinking about heading home from the bar (except me, obviously). Granted, the rest of the awakened world can put the hurt on your server, but I'd prepare for when the East Coast wakes up. :-)

I've been using GRC Shields Up all along; would like to try this one too. But, I keep getting this:

Sorry, but the monkey that does the scanning is kind of busy at the moment. Try again later!

Same here...

Alternatively — http://portscan.me/

It's rather disappointing that this doesn't default to using nmap's -PN option, since they can be reasonably sure that the host actually is up (after all, it just requested the web page). Not all routers respond to ping.

Ok ill change this, as soon as the storm is over...check back tomorrow :-)

I was talking about portscan.me, not checkmyrouter.org - unless you happen to run both.

I'm not sure the design of the website matches what it does. It'll probably scare or at least worry a few people into thinking open ports are scary and bad.

Oh and yes, id like to built something similar to ShieldsUp - let me know if anyone is interested to join and help coding

Any advantages to using this other than ShieldsUp (which has been around longer than I've probably been alive)?

It looks cooler - and eventually shall have more features and better explanations. Isn't a bit of change always a good thing :-)

Sure, but don't just steal the Shields Up content! Your description of port scans has been copy-pasted from Shields Up. Your disclaimer text is identical except that "Shields Up" is replaced by "CheckMyRouter"...

Hmm thanks for that feedback. The site is really just getting started so certainly there are some rough edges; will rewrite the disclaimer part and shorten it while i'm at it.

PS: Updated the common portscan description. Also, feel free to get in touch and make it better / more useful.

This seems infinitely useful, but "the monkey that does the scanning is kind of busy at the moment. Try again later!"

WOW this thing's awesome. Didn't know i had that many ports open :)

sounds like they are confused about what routers are. unless they are using traceroute.

It's a common language version of "router", not the sysadmin one.

It doesn't take a sysadmin to use at least approximately correct terminology for basic networking concepts (I'm not one).

How so ?

If a website sees the HTTP connection terminating at some other IP address than the machine your browser is running on, it's some kind of middlebox (proxy, NAT box etc) and not a router.

The central concept of the packet-switched internet is that network nodes forwarding the packets (called routers) are just dumb packet forwarders and invisible to the communicating parties. It's called end-to-end transparency and it's what has enabled new Internet apps to be deployed without requiring support from the network. Like the web, or voip, or bittorrent.

http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1812#section-5.2.1.1 specifies what routers do when forwarding IPv4 packets.

Just because it does other things doesn't make it not a router. The primary purpose of a router is connecting different networks at layer 3, and a consumer-end box is certainly doing so.

What a consumer NAT box typically does is not routing. Routing is IP forwarding without messing with the packets. See the link in my post.

Here are various other kinds of middlebox devices that are also generally about connecting networks at layer 3 with various side effects vs routing (just like NAT):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middlebox#Types_of_Middleboxes

None of these devices are internet routers. It's just wrong terminology.

It does NAT and then it routes. In addition, any device with ipv6 support does the pure routing without messing with the packets that you speak of. It's a firewall and a NAT device and a router all in one. Sometimes it's a modem too.

Site seems down. HN Effect?

Where is the "Yet Another" Prefix???

what a stupid protocol