Constant Network Traffic

arvetusarvetus Nacogdoches, TX
edited October 2007 in Science & Tech
Lately, I've been having almost constant network traffic, even durring periods of inactivity on my PC. I've never really had that before, I've always had idle time. But my PC is constantly passing network traffic, and I'm not entirely sure where it's going. Scans with AVG Pro, Spybot and PestPatrol reveal nothing and I can't find anything malicious in HijackThis. I also ran TCPView and everything seems pretty normal.

Any other suggestions? Anybody want to see any logs from anything?

Comments

  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited October 2007
    Software updates, p2p file transfers, keep alive packets. Lots of things can cause traffic. How are you determining that your pc is constantly sending network traffic?

    Do you have a router that you can look at and see what's actually being sent/received?
  • arvetusarvetus Nacogdoches, TX
    edited October 2007
    kryyst wrote:
    Software updates, p2p file transfers, keep alive packets. Lots of things can cause traffic. How are you determining that your pc is constantly sending network traffic?

    Do you have a router that you can look at and see what's actually being sent/received?

    I have the network connection icon always showing in the tray. It's constantly lit up. It might blink for a second, but then it's right back to solid send and receive. I'm also watching the number of packets being sent and received when I double click on that icon and up the connection properties, and the numbers are constantly climbing.

    Windows auto-update is turned on, yes, but I don't have the yellow shield saying it's downloading updates, and I don't have notification that updates have been downloaded. Besides, I have that set to take off at 3am, so I wouldn't see the traffic. I have all my updates scheduled for the middle of the night...antivirus, windows.
  • GHoosdumGHoosdum Icrontian
    edited October 2007
    What kind of router do you have?

    If you're worried about what traffic might be going on, you can install a personal firewall software package that will alert you any time a program tries to connect. When I had one running years ago, I found that many programs that are part of Windows were trying to connect at times of zero user-initiated activity.

    It's probably not malicious in a malware sense, but it could be malicious in the MS "Big Brother" sense.
  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited October 2007
    You have to realize that your computer is constantly sending out information if it's on the network - at the base minimum it's just sending out a 'hi I'm still here' packet.

    If you are concerned you need to find out what that info is and to do that a personal firewall should do the trick.
  • GHoosdumGHoosdum Icrontian
    edited October 2007
    Good point, kryyst. There will be constant innocuous activity just from the fact that you're connected to the network.
  • rapturerapture
    edited October 2007
    do 'netstat -a' in command prompt if you really want to freak yourself out
  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited October 2007
    rapture wrote:
    do 'netstat -a' in command prompt if you really want to freak yourself out

    Dear lord, that's just what we need 1000 posts on here of netstat -a dumps with people wanting them analyzed. Plus most virus's masquerade as something benign so it's not always obvious in a netstat, if it shows up at all.
  • arvetusarvetus Nacogdoches, TX
    edited October 2007
    All righty, well, I don't remember there being constant activity. Maybe every 4 or 5 seconds or so I can understand, but not constant traffic 100% of the time. I guess I will just keep an eye on it.
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