Home network router shows higher transmitted packets than received

Routing94 said:

As for file sharing, it's turned off I'm sure, and no one is moving files around the network, we all work locally off our own machines, just all connected to the same router.

Even if I were to cross out the file sharing from my extensive question there would still be plenty left unaccounted for.
Anyway, I would put the laptops side by side and see if there is any correspondence in data transfer, but seeing as the LAN side of things is also interestingly peaking out like the other devices, it is definitely widespread across the network.

Are you using some sort of tunneling software or p2p on the local network, or are you guys sharing torrents or something? If not, is there a domain that you are all connecting to? Is this a work-based professional network with heavily administered configuration going on in the background?
In the case of the latter, someone may or may not be telling you that they're actually watching everything that you do across the network. I have witnessed professional remote screen-viewing software do this sort of thing, but it made a lot more sense in an enterprise fiber-optic interconnected government environment...

Again, put all of the resource monitors, task managers, connection status windows and what ever else you can think of up on all of the screens next to each other so that you watch for any similarities in their activity.
If there is none, then somebody is keeping secrets from you and there is more to your network than you are aware of.

If all else fails I would try to seek out any suspicious behaviour that I can't explain during my usual routine of music, word processing and what ever else. I would probably unplug the WAN and the phone just for insurance.

Since you haven't shown me your resource monitor I can't really tell you whether there are any software packages that are designed to run the network that hard installed on your computers.

Edit: You can try to turn off NetBIOS and see if the computer that has it turned off on is steadily easing away from the trend.

Routing94 said:

Okay, thanks for the tips.
it's all internally on the LAN so it's not using up our internet bandwidth or slowing down our web browsing speeds, right?

That's right but if your network is cheap it may actually be a problem when all of your devices are operating like this simultaneously. If you have wireless N, then you have 30MB/s to play with per device. Each device should be happy to speak to each other at speeds less than and up to that without affecting your network, but then there's the wired computer. That one may be connected at 10Mb, 100Mb or 1Gbit. At 100Mb it has about 9-10MB/s of bandwidth to play with. If it isn't FULL DUPLEX, this means that rapid connectivity between that machine and the others could slow its internet access right down or make it choppy. If it is FULL DUPLEX then upload or download will only be stunted based on which ever is being hit, and I don't know which is. Particularly per specific machine. This is less likely with the laptops but still a possibility considering I can max out these connections with a single file transfer myself.

As we don't know what is really happening here I can't promise that it will not hurt your internet connectivity, but I am sure you understand the principle of a trafficked highway and how that highway has an entrance(s) that can also have a traffic jam leading up to it.

Routing94 said:

router or just data transfer between the pc's and the router itself.

Yes, and this requires resources. This also indicates the network is communicating frantically amongst itself. A router has one lone CPU that can be stressed.

Routing94 said:

each individual pc has a sensible amount of transfered bytes, only the router reports a high number.

Oh, that's different. I thought your computer was consistent with the router's readings. I suppose I should have asked you for that network status screenshot a little bit more thoroughly.

Routing94 said:

It's okay, it's probably my fault for withholding relevant information. I just didn't know it was relevant.

Usually when I am asking someone for information it tends to be relevant to the discussion at hand.

Routing94 said:

Funnily enough, I reset the router so it's values were zero, disconnected all Ethernet devices and then looked at it's statistics via a wireless laptop.

With no Ethernet devices attached at all, it reported 5000+ bytes transmitted via Ethernet and none received. I'm guessing none received as it wasn't online to receive the usual data from the internet, the reliable source. As to what was transmitting, I'll never know, since there wasn't any device directly plugged into the router!

Yes, 5000 bytes sounds about right for the router to ask for a...forgot what the word is. Anyway, it repopulates. The internet has nothing to do with the LAN in this case where the router has hoped for a response back from your wired devices. Since it didn't get any, that is why there are no received. It now knows not to bother asking for next time it starts up, though it probably will anyway just for good measure. You might notice a slight decrease in bytes for the next attempt if you don't plug in a wired device.

No, it can't. These devices try to talk to each other all the time just to make sure they're all on the same page, or in that case, just to see if they're still there. Propagating was the word I was looking for. If you turn these things off—and you can't, they're apart of ancient established networking standards—things will not function properly.

Router is turned off and on; its memory cleared, it checks if its previous friends are still awake on the network by sending out a "Hello! Are you still awake?"
There is no response. Router worries its friends have all died spontaneously while it was out, so it now feels less enticed to remember who and where its friends are/were, etc.

That's a gross oversimplification but it should be entertainingly educational enough.