Active internet connections. A little help please.

[Mad Mikeyboy]

I've been having bother with Sky since I moved to them for my broadband. The wonderfull support team there tell me I have spyware on my computer(not likely but ran sophos AV just in case), due to the ammount of active internet connections showing. This they say is whats using bandwidth and the cause of my slow internet connection. I am not running Limewire or anything else like that in the background.

I'm not very good with computers but maybe someone can tell me what these entries mean? As this is what sky support told me to do.

I go to hard drive>applications>utillities>network utillities then select en0 for ethernet connection then hit the netstat tab.

Below is a sample of the 30 or so entries that come up. How do I find out what these connections are and stop them running if I need to.

Sorry about the rambling on but as I say computers aren't my chosen subject. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Active Internet connections (including servers)
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address (state)
tcp4 0 0 *.* *.* CLOSED
tcp4 0 0 *.* *.* CLOSED
tcp4 0 0 *.svrloc *.* LISTEN
tcp4 0 0 localhost.netinfo-loca localhost.1010 ESTABLISHED
tcp4 0 0 localhost.1010 localhost.netinfo-loca ESTABLISHED
tcp4 0 0 *.* *.* CLOSED
tcp4 0 0 *.* *.* CLOSED
tcp4 0 0 *.afpovertcp *.* LISTEN
tcp46 0 0 *.afpovertcp *.* LISTEN
tcp4 0 0 localhost.netinfo-loca localhost.1021 ESTABLISHED
tcp4 0 0 localhost.1021 localhost.netinfo-loca ESTABLISHED
tcp4 0 0 localhost.netinfo-loca *.* LISTEN
udp4 0 0 *.* *.*
udp4 0 0 *.mdns *.*
udp4 0 0 *.svrloc *.*
udp4 0 0 *.* *.*
udp4 0 0 localhost.49173 localhost.1022
udp4 0 0 localhost.49172 localhost.1022
udp4 0 0 localhost.1022 *.*
udp4 0 0 localhost.49171 localhost.1023

[markuswarren]

the afpovertcp item will be there as you'll have File Sharing enabled in the Sharing preference pane in System Preferences.

As for the other entries, I'm not sure, sorry.

[captainH]

Are you sure bandwidith is really being used up and it's not just a slow connection? Sounds like the "support" staff are just fobbing you off.

You could try using istat:

http://www.islayer.com/index.php?op=item&id=25

The network info from that tells you the amount of data transmitted and received since reboot and also a realtime update of current network traffic. You could then see if anything looks strange e.g. is there lots of network activity when you are not running anything?

[jont]

This is the standard sky line when you complain about slow connection speeds - they've said it to me a number of times - again I'm no network expert so don't know if it is BS or not :-(

Jon

[spooney]

Originally Posted by Mad Mikeyboy

Active Internet connections (including servers)
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address (state)
tcp4 0 0 *.* *.* CLOSED
tcp4 0 0 *.* *.* CLOSED
tcp4 0 0 *.svrloc *.* LISTEN
tcp4 0 0 localhost.netinfo-loca localhost.1010 ESTABLISHED
tcp4 0 0 localhost.1010 localhost.netinfo-loca ESTABLISHED
tcp4 0 0 *.* *.* CLOSED
tcp4 0 0 *.* *.* CLOSED
tcp4 0 0 *.afpovertcp *.* LISTEN
tcp46 0 0 *.afpovertcp *.* LISTEN
tcp4 0 0 localhost.netinfo-loca localhost.1021 ESTABLISHED
tcp4 0 0 localhost.1021 localhost.netinfo-loca ESTABLISHED
tcp4 0 0 localhost.netinfo-loca *.* LISTEN
udp4 0 0 *.* *.*
udp4 0 0 *.mdns *.*
udp4 0 0 *.svrloc *.*
udp4 0 0 *.* *.*
udp4 0 0 localhost.49173 localhost.1022
udp4 0 0 localhost.49172 localhost.1022
udp4 0 0 localhost.1022 *.*
udp4 0 0 localhost.49171 localhost.1023

From what I can see here your box is sitting there and doing nothing on the network except listening for incoming traffic.

Outgoing traffic would look like following

tcp4 0 0 192.168.0.30.ipulse-ic 192.168.0.30.49185 ESTABLISHED
tcp4 0 0 192.168.0.30.49185 192.168.0.30.ipulse-ic ESTABLISHED
tcp4 0 0 192.168.0.30.ipulse-ic 192.168.0.30.49184 ESTABLISHED
tcp4 0 0 192.168.0.30.49184 192.168.0.30.ipulse-ic ESTABLISHED
tcp4 0 0 192.168.0.30.ipulse-ic 192.168.0.30.49183 ESTABLISHED
tcp4 0 0 192.168.0.30.49183 192.168.0.30.ipulse-ic ESTABLISHED

[Mad Mikeyboy]

Originally Posted by spooney

From what I can see here your box is sitting there and doing nothing on the network except listening for incoming traffic.

With the limited knowledge I have, that was the assumption I made. Therefor it would appear I have only 4 active connections after checking again. So this is not the problem with my slow connection.
I kind of suspected that and it seems Sky are fobbing me off cause I'm asking questions that they dont have answers to in the call centre manual!!!!