When BOINC initiates a dial-up connection, it immediately attempts to resolve the project's server address before giving the computer time to complete dialing and establish a connection. It then reports it can’t resolve the host (of course) and disconnects.

All machines are using WinXP Pro SP2 and most are now running BOINC 5.2.13, but this problem has been going with previous versions of BOINC. I’m not ruling out a problem with the way my dial-up is configured within in windows, but I don’t know what the problem could be and other programs (such as AV software), dial-up just fine.

This problem is still ongoing on several machines with multiple projects attached.

Not sure if my previous message was clear enough. BOINC is not waiting for the dial up to establish a connection before it attempts to connect to each projects host. Before the computers can establish then connection (while it is still dialing & handshaking), BOINC tries to contact the projects host. BOINC reports that it can't resolve the host (which makes sense since the computer is still trying to establish the connection) and then disconnects the dial-up.

AV software & windows update establishes the connection just fine, which makes me think this is a BOINC problem.

It is a BOINC problem, and it's on the list... I'm assuming that in options/connections, you have it set to "use my dial-up" and not "automatically detect" - it _could_ be assuming a constant connection if the detection comes back wrong.

If that setting is right, the best advice I can give is to make the connection _first_, before enabling net access in BOINC. Generally for dial-up, you want to control when BOINC can and can't connect, using the Commands menu, anyway...

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Thank you for the response. Yes, I've tried various communictions options but no option solves teh problem. Since these are remote, isolated machines, I can't justify a broadband connection nor is anyone there to manually connect.

Is there anyway to script (using windows host script) to tell BOINC to connect? I could then automate the dial-up process with script.

Thank you for the response. Yes, I've tried various communictions options but no option solves teh problem. Since these are remote, isolated machines, I can't justify a broadband connection nor is anyone there to manually connect.

Is there anyway to script (using windows host script) to tell BOINC to connect? I could then automate the dial-up process with script.

I don't know but I have an idea for you to play with.

script commands:
1) establish connection
2) delay to ensure connection is active
3) boinccmd --set_network_mode always
4) delay for BOINC to do it's communicating
5) boinccmd --set_network_mode never
6) close connection

This should cause BOINC to not attempt to communicate inbetween runs of the script. You may have to include navigation commands to make your BOINC directory the active directory before using the boinccmd program. When I tested boinccmd on my host it seemed to give errors but worked anyway so you may want to ingonre errors when running the script. Backoffs shouldn't trouble you much since most will expire inbetween runs of the script so BOINC should be ready to communicate by the time the script runs. You will have to play with it to determine how long the delays should be.

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BOINC WIKI

BOINCing since 2002/12/8

Thank you. Based on your idea, I created a vbscript that seems to be doing the trick. It took some tweaking. In short...

The script pings a webserver to check if there is a connection.

If it finds the connection, its sets --Set_Run_Mode Always, waits a few seconds, then sets --Set_Network_Mode Always.

Once the script detects the connection is closed (by pinging the webserver a few minutes), it sets --Set_Run_Mode Auto and --Set_Network_Mode Never.