AOL Plus / DirectPc & Zonealarm

[john]

AOL Plus will connect and works fine for a short while. Then I can browse around in AOL but cannot browse the internet with AOL or IE. If i disconnect and try to re-connect my AOL dialup box says that it can't communicate with the satellite modem. I must close AOL and restart it to dial back in. If I disable Zonealarm this problem disappears. Any ideas??

[Mark]

How come i can't connect to any java websites,like yahoo chat,musicdownload and media player. Now aol is making me very mad can i please get some answers.

[Graham]

When you connect to AOL you are not connecting to the internet: even their dialup system uses a different configuration than Windows. What you are going is connecting to a communications system which has a portal to (some parts of) the internet.

AOL's browser has many security features removed and the content of data through that portal is subject to filtering (some would say censorship). Many firewalls don't work well with the AOL dialup.

My advice to you is get a free ISP and connect to the internet through them, and if you really have to use AOL, use the ISP link. You will then be able to use a firewall on the connection. Or if your not bothered about chat rooms, do what I do: use AIM and doctor it so that it doesn't connect to adservers and connect through a firewall.