What am I downloading?

[GoPodular.com]

I've been having serious issues with my internet connection the past 3weeks or so.  As part of the troubleshooting, I installed the 30-day trial of "DU Meter".  It shows that I am constantly downloading something at 0.1kB-0.6kB.  This is on XP Pro SP2.  Any ideas what it is?  I have everything that I know of disabled.  There shouldn't be anything going.   

I also get a 0.1kB (speed not file size) upload about every 45-60 seconds.

AVG antivirus comes up with nothing.  Is this just a handshake between the comp and the modem?

[thebrownshow]

Any time I get that funny feeling these days, I just reformat.

Assuming you tried Spybot, Ad-Aware, etc...?

[GoPodular.com]

Yep.

And I'm thinking the same thing.  Haven't reformatted this thing for about 9 months.  I need to do some serious backup though.

[grantspain]

i think its just the standard communication between the server and your modem,its too small to be any serious data

[Daniel270]

Also, it might be any of your software trying to check for updates....  Yahoo Messenger/Pager is BAD about doing it.....

[Silver]

If you really want to know then run etherreal, its a network analyser, and will show you *every* single packet going through a network connection. You will need some network knowledge to decipher it...

However, windows xp conwtantly attempts to search for local networks, and other windows networked pc's. So probably nothing to worry about.

[GoPodular.com]

Well I'm back online via DSL instead of Cable.  (It's a long story)  I don't have the constant traffic anymore, just periodic stuff.  My uneducated guess is DHCP stuff, but out of curiousity I'm going to try etherreal to see if I can pinpoint exactly what it is.  I'm guessing maybe a ping request or something to see if the assigned ip is still active?

[sirwoogie]

It could be ANYTHING. It could be cisco discovery protocol, it could be interferrence, it could be Venus aligning with Jupiter. Nevertheless, ethereal will tell you.

[shmokes]

Shouldn't be DHCP.  Your computer should send out a DHCP discovery packet and an introduction/request, but once it has an IP address it won't keep chatting constantly with the server.

[MYX]

It is NSA just checking to see what yer up to.