resonator's questions

For the last two weeks whenever I try to run an update on any of the machines in the network the Sonicwall firewall is logging an error "Probable TCP NULL scan dropped" with a source IP of the Windows Update servers, and the website never finishes loading.

I've got a server which is connected to a second internet connection. I tried it there just through lynx, and it worked. I changed the default gateway to our main internet connection and it wouldn't.

I've found a few references to this problem through Google searches, but no answers. Has anyone found a solution to this problem before.

edit: I found this

if we send a packet to a remote system in which all the flags are turned off (That is, set to NULL), then the remote system would actually not know what to do with the packet or in other words, it would not know what this packet was meant for.

You see, each flag is supposed to perform a particular function. According to the function that you wish to perform, the various TCP flags are turned on and turned off. Now, when the client sends a packet with all the flags turned off, then the server has absolutely no idea as to what it has to do with the packet or as to why the client sent the packet. If the NULL packet is directed to an open port, then the service running on that port replies with a error message. However, if the NULL packet is directed to a closed port, then the remote system replies with a RST or reset because the NULL packet it received did not contain enough information to establish a connection.

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Hardware/Networking_Hardware/Q_23007755.html

If what was said is true, why am I not having any trouble when I use another internet connection?

I'm looking for a way to create an offsite backup of around 8TB of data. I've currently broken the data down into 2-4TB file systems and I'm using ShadowProtect to backup the data from an SBS 2003 server to a Windows 2003 backup server using a weekly full backup, and nightly incrementals.

I'm not very happy with this solution for a bunch of reasons.

• It takes too long to backup.
• To hold more than a weeks worth of backups requires tons of space.
• Offsite backups to external hdds would require too many disks, and too much time.
• Offsite backups over the internet would take too much bandwidth.

What I'm looking for if possible is someway to have a local backup server to house many snapshots without storing duplicate data like faubackup seems to be able to do. As well I would like to be able to span the backups that are made across a set of external disks, without duplicate data because the filesystems are bigger than I can fit on a single disk.

Correct me if I'm wrong but as far as I can tell it's a bit of an impossible situation to span the new data across more filesystems than faubackup itself uses due to it's use of hardlinks.

I've also been thinking about using openfiler some way to achieve the same goals, but haven't thought of a way yet.

How do other people cope with offsite backups of such large amounts of data.

edit:
For a bit more background information, we are a relatively small (about 15 employees) geology company where we basically take huge data sets, and make them readable. Projects often run into hundreds of Gigs. In spite of the importance of offsite backups, I will have trouble getting the money required to buy a tape autoloader that will do the kind of data we are looking at. I've tried and was basically told that there must be another way and I have to find it.

We have two servers. An SBS2003 server and a Windows 2003 R2 server which is used as a backup server. Both machines have a 20TB RAID6 array which houses our data. In any given day as well as regular stuff there will be minor modifications to many very large files.