W7 Ult. Node NIC activity after power off not captured by wireshark

I am trying to investigate NIC activity after shutdown and turning off all power.

I know this sounds strange, but I completely remove the power from the node and still there is network activity being generated!

I tried to examine the activity with Wireshark, but it seems that it cannot 'see' this traffic although I have no filter set and should see all data on the wire.

The activity is not a link beat indication as I see the packet count rise on my router.

I turned off WOL (wake on LAN) function in BIOS from the very beginning (before setting up the node).

I would appreciate any feedback from others who can help. I will be checking this with other (and older) protocol analyzers to see if I get some answers. I will post my findings here, when I have something to report.

Welcome to the Seven Forums.

Do these packet counts on the router continue to rise if you unplug the LAN cable from the desktop?

Or is this a Wireless NIC?

Is the NIC built in to the motherboard?
If so, what is the model number of the motherboard?
If not, what is the model number of the NIC?

No, they discontinue after separating the plug from its socket on the motherboard.
NIC is a motherboard component.
Motherboard is an Intel Model DP67BA with a i7 3770K CPU.
I believe you have the rest on file.

I could not tell if that motherboard is vPro/AMT compliant.
Intel vPro - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Intel Active Management Technology (Intel AMT), a set of hardware-based features targeted at businesses. / allow remote access to the PC for management and security tasks, when an OS is down or PC power is off.

I'm not sure what else to tell you. Maybe other forum members will chime in.