Firewall blocking msgs from Microsoft (Foldershare)

Foldershare has been working well for me for a number of months, and I
thank the Microsoft Foldershare team for their hard work on this great
product.

I have a question regarding some messages I'm seeing in my hardware
firewall's log (see below). The firewall is blocking a number of
attempts by Microsoft to access ports on my system. I'm guessing that
these attempts are coming from the Foldershare server, and that they
are probably benign.

Although Foldershare seems to be working OK, I'm wondering if you can
verify that these requests are indeed coming from Foldershare, and
tell me if I should take any action to handle these probes by
adjusting settings in my firewall to let them through. Perhaps I can
improve performance (or at least alleviate my possibly paranoid
concerns).

Thank you,

Jon S.
Systems Analyst

P.S. These messages were logged immedately after booting up this
morning, immediately after the router came online and Foldershare
logged in. I've edited out my local IP addresses....

[info] Sun May 11 08:49:59 2008 Blocked incoming TCP connection
request from 65.55.24.40:3513 to xx.xx.xx.xx:6571
[info] Sun May 11 08:49:59 2008 Blocked incoming TCP connection
request from 65.55.24.40:3514 to xx.xx.xx.xx:8000
[info] Sun May 11 08:49:59 2008 Blocked incoming TCP connection
request from 65.55.24.40:3512 to xx.xx.xx.xx:443
[info] Sun May 11 08:49:59 2008 Blocked incoming TCP connection
request from 65.55.24.40:3511 to xx.xx.xx.xx:80
[info] Sun May 11 08:49:53 2008 Blocked incoming TCP connection
request from 65.55.24.40:3514 to xx.xx.xx.xx:8000
[info] Sun May 11 08:49:53 2008 Blocked incoming TCP connection
request from 65.55.24.40:3513 to xx.xx.xx.xx:6571
[info] Sun May 11 08:49:53 2008 Blocked incoming TCP connection
request from 65.55.24.40:3512 to xx.xx.xx.xx:443
[info] Sun May 11 08:49:53 2008 Blocked incoming TCP connection
request from 65.55.24.40:3511 to xx.xx.xx.xx:80
[info] Sun May 11 08:49:50 2008 Blocked incoming TCP connection
request from 65.55.24.40:3513 to xx.xx.xx.xx:6571
[info] Sun May 11 08:49:50 2008 Blocked incoming TCP connection
request from 65.55.24.40:3514 to xx.xx.xx.xx:8000
[info] Sun May 11 08:49:50 2008 Blocked incoming TCP connection
request from 65.55.24.40:3512 to xx.xx.xx.xx:443
[info] Sun May 11 08:49:50 2008 Blocked incoming TCP connection
request from 65.55.24.40:3511 to xx.xx.xx.xx:80

Although its assignee does not have reverse DNS on address 65.55.24.40 it
is in one of Microsoft's netblocks and those connection attempts were only
to FolderShare TCP/IP service ports, so I would presume those connection
attempts were both proper and benign.

CIDR: 65.52.0.0/14
NetName: MICROSOFT-1BLK

Neither FolderShare staff nor documentation have explained the benefits, if
any, from allowing incoming connections. I run the program both with and
without those and I never notice any difference in performance.

Tony

The polling on FolderShare startup is used to determine if your client can
accept p2p connections from other clients. If these are negative, all file
transfers will go through the FolderShare relay servers which will make the
transfer slower and cannot handle files over 2GB.

If you want the best performance when transferring files, you should allow
these incoming connections.

--
Jeremy Epling
Lead Program Manager - Windows Live FolderShare


"Anthony R. Gold" wrote:

On Mon, 12 May 2008 20:09:03 -0700, Jeremy Epling [MSFT]
<JeremyEplingMSFT@xxxxxx> wrote:
Thanks for that heads-up Jeremy. Both the speed advantage and the ability
to handle files over 2GB by allowing p2p between clients appear to be both
valuable and also absent from mention in the Windows Live Help pages.

Tony

On May 12, 11:42 pm, "Anthony R. Gold" <not-for-m...@xxxxxx>
wrote: Thanks Jeremy. I'll go to my router and see what I can do to let
these through.

Jon

On May 12, 11:09 pm, Jeremy Epling [MSFT]
<JeremyEplingM...@xxxxxx> wrote: I set up Port Forwarding in my router's firewall for these particular
port requests. At least I think I got it right. The messages about
incoming TCP connections being blocked have gone away, but now I'm
getting the messages shown below. Any idea what to do about them, if
anything?

Also, Folder share says it is online, but it has stopped saying
"behind NAT". Is that to be expected since I changed the port
filtering rules?

[info] Wed May 14 10:06:15 2008 Blocked incoming TCP packet from
65.55.24.46:443 to xx.xx.xx.xx:1030 as PSH:ACK received but there is
no active connection
[info] Wed May 14 10:06:14 2008 Blocked outgoing TCP packet from
192.168.0.199:80 to 65.55.24.43:37154 as FIN:ACK received but there is
no active connection
[info] Wed May 14 10:06:14 2008 Blocked outgoing TCP packet from
192.168.0.199:6571 to 65.55.24.43:37156 as FIN:ACK received but there
is no active connection
[info] Wed May 14 10:06:14 2008 Blocked outgoing TCP packet from
192.168.0.199:443 to 65.55.24.43:37155 as FIN:ACK received but there
is no active connection
[info] Wed May 14 10:06:14 2008 Blocked outgoing TCP packet from
192.168.0.199:8000 to 65.55.24.43:37157 as FIN:ACK received but there
is no active connection
[info] Wed May 14 10:06:12 2008 Blocked incoming TCP packet from
65.55.24.49:443 to xx.xx.xx.xx:1053 as PSH:ACK received but there is
no active connection
[info] Wed May 14 10:06:12 2008 Blocked incoming TCP packet from
65.55.24.43:37155 to xx.xx.xx.xx:443 as ACK received but there is no
active connection
[info] Wed May 14 10:06:12 2008 Blocked incoming TCP packet from
65.55.24.43:37156 to xx.xx.xx.xx:6571 as ACK received but there is no
active connection
[info] Wed May 14 10:06:12 2008 Blocked incoming TCP packet from
65.55.24.43:37157 to xx.xx.xx.xx:8000 as ACK received but there is no
active connection
[info] Wed May 14 10:06:12 2008 Blocked incoming TCP packet from
65.55.24.43:37154 to xx.xx.xx.xx:80 as ACK received but there is no
active connection
[info] Wed May 14 10:06:07 2008 Blocked incoming TCP packet from
65.55.24.46:443 to xx.xx.xx.xx:1030 as PSH:ACK received but there is
no active connection
[info] Wed May 14 10:06:03 2008 Above message repeated 1 times
[info] Wed May 14 10:06:01 2008 Blocked incoming TCP packet from
65.55.24.49:443 to xx.xx.xx.xx:1053 as PSH:ACK received but there is
no active connection
[info] Wed May 14 10:06:01 2008 Blocked incoming TCP packet from
65.55.24.46:443 to xx.xx.xx.xx:1030 as PSH:ACK received but there is
no active connection
[info] Wed May 14 10:05:59 2008 Above message repeated 1 times
[info] Wed May 14 10:05:58 2008 Blocked outgoing TCP packet from
192.168.0.199:1030 to 65.55.24.46:443 as PSH:ACK received but there is
no active connection
[info] Wed May 14 10:05:57 2008 Blocked incoming TCP packet from
65.55.24.46:443 to xx.xx.xx.xx:1030 as PSH:ACK received but there is
no active connection
[info] Wed May 14 10:05:56 2008 Above message repeated 1 times
[info] Wed May 14 10:05:56 2008 Blocked incoming TCP packet from
65.55.24.49:443 to xx.xx.xx.xx:1053 as PSH:ACK received but there is
no active connection
[info] Wed May 14 10:05:55 2008 Log viewed by IP address
192.168.0.199
[info] Wed May 14 10:05:55 2008 Blocked incoming TCP packet from
65.55.24.46:443 to xx.xx.xx.xx:1030 as PSH:ACK received but there is
no active connection
[info] Wed May 14 10:05:53 2008 Allowed configuration authentication
by IP address 192.168.0.199
[info] Wed May 14 10:05:53 2008 Blocked incoming TCP packet from
65.55.24.49:443 to xx.xx.xx.xx:1053 as PSH:ACK received but there is
no active connection
[info] Wed May 14 10:05:50 2008 Above message repeated 1 times
[info] Wed May 14 10:05:48 2008 Blocked outgoing TCP packet from
192.168.0.189:1053 to 65.55.24.49:443 as PSH:ACK received but there is
no active connection
[info] Wed May 14 10:05:47 2008 Blocked incoming TCP packet from
65.55.24.49:443 to xx.xx.xx.xx:1053 as PSH:ACK received but there is
no active connection
[info] Wed May 14 10:05:45 2008 Above message repeated 2 times
[info] Wed May 14 10:05:39 2008 Time synchronized

Yes, It should stop saying Behind NAT. I am not sure how to help with the "no
active connection" issue. Sorry I can't help more.

If you have a UPNP router and the FolderShare UPNP setting enabled, you do
not need to manually map ports.

--
Jeremy Epling
Lead Program Manager - Windows Live FolderShare


"Jon S" wrote:

On May 14, 11:56 pm, Jeremy Epling [MSFT]
<JeremyEplingM...@xxxxxx> wrote: