Opinion needed from IT folk

In My Humble Opinion
1

So I am worried that I may have been robbed. I bought renter’s insurance before I left for Xmas, but I’m worried sick that I may have been robbed. The reason I need IT folk is because I’m basing this solely on technological reasons. I guess I’m looking for more opinions on the matter.

So before I left home, I left my desktop computer on. I wanted to be able to control it from home via VNC and SSH. I have an iMac running Mac OS X Leopard. So I logged in to an open network from my laptop and tested to see if everything worked. VNC and SSH worked, so I was happy. I took my laptop with me.

I got stuck in the airport for many, many, hours and tested the VNC stuff and played around with it a bit. Worked fine.

So when I tried it again on the 26th I got no response from my machine. This made me very worried. So I logged in to my router (I can access it remotely) and I saw that even though my machine wasn’t responding, it was in the “device list.” So I proceeded to reboot the router to make my iMac reconnect and gain access to it.

Now when I looked at my router, it showed no attached devices. I also should have an Xbox attached to it too. Actually I can’t access my router anymore, because I lost remote access when I tried to use it to connect to another router. I wanted to connect it to my neighbor’s linksys signal and see if my machine were on there somehow.

But a few things I noticed. The router was on for 15 days. If the power had gone out (rare in Brooklyn) the router should have restarted and shown a much shorter time as I left 4 days ago. So I think that pretty much rules out the prospect of there being a power blip that killed the computer and not the router. The computer would not restart itself though. And besides, it’d connect to the router if it restarted itself.

Secondly, this morning, I was logged in to AIM. Normally on AIM if you’re logged in from two separate IPs, then you get a message on both machines asking you to respond 1 to log off the other machine or 2 to keep them both logged on.

So honestly I’m not sure what to think. The only way I can imagine this happening is if my machine somehow logged on to the local open linksys router which does happen from time to time (although not that often at all). But I don’t recall turning off my Xbox, which would certainly show up in my router’s list. The only thing that I can imagine would be that the normal operation of my machines is somehow different when there’s no traffic at all for a few days. This is something I’ve not seen.

So am I being super-paranoid or not? The thing about the makeup of my house is that we live in a normally-secure neighborhood. Our house wouldn’t be terribly difficult to break in to. But I think it’d be a little conspicuous. I also left a light on in the living room. We have two fire-escapes. I was the last to leave the house and I forgot to check my roommate’s windows to see if they were locked. But he lives on the front side of the house and you’d have to be pretty ballsy to break in to the top floor of a building in a neighborhood like ours from the fire-escape.

The other alternative is that a robber would come in from the courtyard and climb the rear fire-escape. But those are locked and would require breaking of windows. So can anyone offer me any consolation?

I don’t expect that there’d be any reason for my machine to freeze. It’s Mac OS X which will rarely do that especially when doing nothing. The AIM login this morning was what really made me worried.

2

Call a neighbor or police, to check it out?

3

Well my roommate gets in tomorrow, so that’s when I’ll know. I’m agonizing really, so I just need some justification to not be so worried. I don’t want to get the police involved sight unseen

4

Your computer may have just crashed.

5

Sounds like what happens when you lose power on the other end.

6

Our devices come and go off our Linksys router with frustrating frequency. Sometimes they are all down - more frequently the Tivo stays connected just fine - and the computers go offline. Sometimes the router goes offline and only picks up certain devices when it comes back on.

We’ve had three routers and its happened with all of them.

Most likely scenario is that part or all of your equipment had a burp (probably power) and some reregistered and some didn’t. If the systems did a brown out, its often enough to reset connectivity but not reset the amount of uptime on the systems.

7

I’m an idiot. My roommate just called and said everything was fine. I feel ridiculous

8

I don’t think you should feel ridiculous. I can understand the router/computer disconnection, but why would AIM show two active sessions? (Assuming I understand the situation correctly…doesn’t AIM have an automatic timeout/logoff?)

9

Those little Linksys routers go bonkers at the blink of an eye.

What I recommend doing is to get a digital lamp timer and set it to turn on at 3:01 AM and to turn off at 3:00 AM. Plug the router and your DSL device into it, and every night they’ll be power-cycled automatically and lost connections should become a distant memory.

10

That isn’t a bad idea, thanks…we are just used to waking up and rebooting a few times a month - and before I was a project manager, I was a network admin, so I can tell the difference between “router no worky” and “internet no worky.”

(Comcast HATES me when I start the conversation with “internet no worky” and then say “a tracert gets to this spot before it stops…I think your problem is likely there - and it was there last week as well, this time instead of just rebooting it, you might want to swap out the equipment.”

11

Well I have to confess, that ever since I switched to Macs, they seem to have MUCH better connectivity to wireless routers. It was sufficiently rare to bring in to question which was rarer, disconnected computer or robbery. I would say that disconnected computer was more likely, but not so much more likely to put my mind at ease. My stuff almost always stays online.

But then again, I’ve never tested it in a situation where there was so little activity for so long. That was the only unknown. I actually don’t use my Desktop too much, and it honestly wouldn’t be a change of pace to not use it for a few days and even then it will stay connected properly.

I feel that I should add at this point that I use the Tomato firmware. I have found it to be a lot more stable than the standard Linksys firmware or the other famous alternative firmware. But I do feel it is strange that my desktop would just hop on to a local open network like that. But I guess it did. It also explains the random connect to AIM. It was probably attempting to connect for a while but was unsuccessful. That open linksys is really really congested, and I normally know immediately when I’m on it by accident.

12

Me so dumb. I don’t understand why the OP thinks his house was broken into/robbed. Because the router apparently shut down at some point, but came back on, he thinks that somebody broke in and . . . rebooted his computer?

Can someone please explain in tiny words?

13

I accept your challenge; see if I have the details right. Oh, and no word in the following is longer than 6 letters – I couldn’t get around not using the word “router”, so 6 was my chosen upper bound. :smiley:

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He goes away. Mac is at home and on; so is the router; so is an Xbox.

While away, he logs into the mac from his iMac using VNC and SSH. It works and he’s happy.

Later, he’s still away…but the mac login does not work; why? Try router login to check device list – mac is on list but no worky; why? Reboot router; no mac listed. Hmmm…Xbox is not there either; why?

Maybe there was a power outage? But the router was up 15 days; he’s only been gone 4. It’s not likely that a power outage would take down the mac but not the router. Try the nearby (open) router to check if mac is there – no joy…in fact, now he can no longer get to his router (oops). Maybe the mac just froze? But that’s very rare (it is a mac, after all). Maybe it was stolen?

Also, AIM shows two IP logins; if the mac was down, only the iMac IP should show up. So, either:[ol][li]stuff (mac and Xbox) was stolen (and mac/AIM is being used by the thief)[/li][li]the power went out, the mac did a reboot, and is now (oddly) on the (open) router; why his router would show 15 days is not known[/li][li]things don’t work as he thinks they should.[/li][/ol]
But roomy is now home and says it’s all OK, so it’s either (2), (3), or some mix of the two. whew!

14

Because he thought the reason that his PC and router were not responding was because they had been stolen from his house?

15

Ah, got it now. Thanks!