My firewall keeps asking to allow Boinc to connect to Google. It seems kinda strange. I blocked the Google connection from Boinc and now get failure to connect to internet. I don't mind the connection to Setiathome, but do not like the connection to a search engine that has in the past tracked users and sold the info. These days you can not be too careful.

drx

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My firewall keeps asking to allow Boinc to connect to Google. It seems kinda strange. I blocked the Google connection from Boinc and now get failure to connect to internet. I don't mind the connection to Setiathome, but do not like the connection to a search engine that has in the past tracked users and sold the info. These days you can not be too careful.

drx

Sounds like you have spyware on the computer.

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LETS BEGIN IN 2010

No, that's standard BOINC behaviour.

If you look back in your message log, you'll sometimes see messages like this (often on a Tuesday, during the maintenance period):

2008-12-03 09:18:27 [SETI@home] Requesting 188 seconds of new work, and reporting 1 completed tasks
2008-12-03 09:18:49 [---] Project communication failed: attempting access to reference site
2008-12-03 09:18:52 [---] Access to reference site succeeded - project servers may be temporarily down.
2008-12-03 09:18:53 [SETI@home] Scheduler request failed: couldn't connect to server

The 'reference site' mentioned is Google - chosen because they have a commercial imperative to be available as close to 99.99999% of the time as possible.

All BOINC is doing is trying to work out where a problem lies, so that it can advise you accordingly.

If BOINC can get a reply (to an empty request) from Google, and can't get a reply from SETI@home, then the problem is probably at SETI@home.

If BOINC can't get a reply from anywhere, whether Google or SETI@home, then the problem is probably with your internet connection, and you should look closer to home.

If you disable access to Google in your firewall, BOINC won't be able to give you such useful advice, but there should be no other side-effects.

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If you disable access to Google in your firewall, BOINC won't be able to give you such useful advice, but there should be no other side-effects.

With use of a cc_config.xml file, it is also possible to keep the core client from attempting that check, the <dont_contact_ref_site> option. With BOINC 6.3.15 or later, it is also possible to substitute a different site for Google, using the <network_test_url> option.

                                                                  Joe

My firewall keeps asking to allow Boinc to connect to Google. It seems kinda strange. I blocked the Google connection from Boinc and now get failure to connect to internet. I don't mind the connection to Setiathome, but do not like the connection to a search engine that has in the past tracked users and sold the info. These days you can not be too careful.

drx

Actually, if you use the appropriate security settings (i.e. Firefox with NoScript) or your "browser" is less than a full web browser (i.e. the BOINC client) there is a very limited amount of information that Google can learn.

I'm not sure that Google is the best choice, but it's pretty benign.

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