I'm running Rosetta on a Ubuntu (linux) based PC and am trying to set up a firewall. If I use sudo netstat -pant in terminal I get a load of IP addresses which are marked as being for the various BOINC projects. What seems strange is that some of the IPs which were allocated to other projects are now allocated to Rosetta, Universities of Geneva, Michigan and London, and not Washington as previously indicated. I reside just outside London in England.

Hard to say what you are seeing, since you've not fully described it. No. BOINC projects do not just periodically swap IP address with each other.

At present, you will see file downloads from any of the 4 Rosetta servers:
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/
http://srv1.bakerlab.org/
http://srv3.bakerlab.org/
http://srv4.bakerlab.org/

That may change in the future as download bandwidth demands change, or as the project changes how they accomodate it, but that is all of them at present.

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Rosetta Moderator: Mod.Sense

This is what I see when using netstat:
Active Internet connections (servers and established)
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State PID/Program name
tcp 1 0 192.168.0.2:50401 138.37.50.115:80 CLOSE_WAIT 7661/rosetta_beta_5
tcp 1 0 192.168.0.2:54621 141.211.70.129:80 CLOSE_WAIT 7661/rosetta_beta_5

tcp 1 0 192.168.0.2:55849 138.37.50.115:80 CLOSE_WAIT 7908/setiathome-5.2

tcp 1 0 192.168.0.2:54390 138.37.50.115:80 CLOSE_WAIT 7838/malariacontrol
tcp 1 0 192.168.0.2:59130 141.211.70.129:80 CLOSE_WAIT 7838/malariacontrol

If I then use whois 138.37.50.115 I then get University of London as the source and 141.211.70.129 is University of Michigan. Regarding my firewall I know that I may receive BOINC work units from the four previously mentioned Universities but is it possible that I could receive information from another (source) University ? The two other IPs that I have are 192.33.217.12 and 140.142.20.112. This means that if I block other IPs I could deny access to BOINC. I have the range of IP addresses for each of the Universities. Please advise.

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I know that I may receive BOINC work units from the four previously mentioned Universities but is it possible that I could receive information from another (source) University ?

The BOINC client does not receive information. I mean it is not a server that a university or anyone else can contact and send information to. This would be unsecure and is not allowed by many ISPs. Everything the BOINC client does originates with the client. It initiates all contact. So, no, it is not possible for any projects that you are not connected to, to contact your machine.

By the way you have 3 programs listed for one IP address, it would seem perhaps that is actually a gateway in your network? Or, that there is a bug in your Linux version and either the wrong program name is shown, or the wrong IP address. You might try traceroute to see how your machine navigates to each of the projects you are running.

The other point would be that you should see the BOINC manager making any internet connections, not Rosetta, or any of the other BOINC projects. The projects should only be localhost connections.

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Rosetta Moderator: Mod.Sense

Thanks for the reply. I'm even more confused. I've tried using traceroute. It works fine if I enter an IP address in the form xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx but if I enter, for example, https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/ it says this is an invalid address (is this an bug ?). My full output for a snapshop of my network traffic is as follows:
Active Internet connections (servers and established)
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State PID/Program name
tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:631 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 5527/cupsd
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:31416 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 5484/boinc_client
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:25 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 5629/master
tcp 1 0 192.168.0.2:35980 192.33.217.12:80 CLOSE_WAIT 7936/rosetta_beta_5
tcp 1 0 192.168.0.2:35981 192.33.217.12:80 CLOSE_WAIT 5484/boinc_client
tcp 1 0 192.168.0.2:60781 138.37.50.115:80 CLOSE_WAIT 5484/boinc_client
tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:55536 127.0.0.1:31416 ESTABLISHED 7825/boincmgr
tcp 1 0 192.168.0.2:48192 138.37.50.115:80 CLOSE_WAIT 5484/boinc_client
tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:31416 127.0.0.1:55536 ESTABLISHED 5484/boinc_client
tcp 1 0 192.168.0.2:37234 192.33.217.12:80 CLOSE_WAIT 5484/boinc_client
tcp 1 0 192.168.0.2:55364 141.211.70.129:80 CLOSE_WAIT 5484/boinc_client
tcp6 0 0 :::2500 :::* LISTEN 5552/inetutils-inet
tcp6 0 0 :::110 :::* LISTEN 5552/inetutils-inet
I've also tried performing traceroute on https://boinc.bakerlab.org/ and also get address can't be found, please enter a valid address.
Sorry to be a pain (I'm new to this).

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You have to use tracert on just the domain ie.

tracert boinc.bakerlab.org

No http://

It came up with an IP address of 140.142.20.103 for me

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Thanks Sir Clark. I've used tracert in terminal for the boinc servers. The thing that I'm unsure of is the other addresses such as 192.33.217.12 138.37.50.115 141.211.70.129 as they are marked as being used by boinc and point to various Universities. If you look at Message 55921 some IPs come up for several Universities, in some cases they don't appear to be directly linked with the project in question.
1) Is netstat incorrectly identifying these IPs with the projects ?
2) Do the different projects link with all of these universities ?
3) Is there a security flaw/problem ?

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