Mysterious activity

[xgdude]

I noticed a lot of blinking lights on my DSL Modem and on my Linksys Router. The modem lights were for Internet and Activity and it looked like a download was in progress. I opened taskmaster and checked applications and there were none listed. Processes had basically no activity. Under performance it reflected CPU usage as 0 percent. Memory was at 1.91GB and physical memory was at 48%. I checked everything in the system tray and nothing was running.

Anyone have any idea what all the activity was and what can I do in the future to identify the activity. This apparent download lasted over an hour.

Running Windows 7 Home, 64 bit

xgdude

 

[Qdos]

Was there a BITS operation in progress?

 

[Britton30]

Welcome to Seven Forums xgdude.
Modems and router always have blinking lights to verify they are connected. Was this blinking out of the ordinary?

You can see network activity by typing resmon in the Start Search then click the network tab.

 

[mgp1964]

If your pc was on then there copuld have been activity such as Windows update checking for updates or other programs checking for updates or you could have seen ping request. You may also want to check your Nic settings and disable power on settings and magic packet but as long as your computer is powered on there will always be some kind of network activity if you have RIP enabled on your router.

 

[FliGi7]

This doesn't sound abnormal at all. Blinking lights on the router are always going to be happening, even when presumably nothing is happening on the computer. Network devices constantly stay in contact with each other. This is nothing to be concerned with.

 

[dsperber]

I noticed a lot of blinking lights on my DSL Modem and on my Linksys Router. The modem lights were for Internet and Activity and it looked like a download was in progress. I opened taskmaster and checked applications and there were none listed. Processes had basically no activity. Under performance it reflected CPU usage as 0 percent. Memory was at 1.91GB and physical memory was at 48%. I checked everything in the system tray and nothing was running.

Anyone have any idea what all the activity was and what can I do in the future to identify the activity. This apparent download lasted over an hour.

If you are using typical cable modem or DSL ISP arrangements, there's just lots of random external activity on the WAN side of the router, most/all of it worthless network traffic. Perhaps some of it is "malicious", seeking out unprotected machines to do who knows what to them.

If you had a software product that could log and present to you the source IP addresses you would know none of them.

All of it is "foiled" by the firewall in your router, or in the absence of a router by Windows Firewall or other software firewall products.

It's annoying to see all of this, especially if you didn't have a router and your machine itself would need to simply reject all of this nonsense traffic via software (and your machine's CPU resources). Unfortunately it is "perfectly normal" and there's nothing you can do about it.

Not to worry, especially if you've double-checked with Task Manager what your machine is actually doing and it showed nothing active or unusual. That's why you have a router... to protect you from this nonsense.

 

[xgdude]

Mysterious Activity

I don't know what a BITS operation is or how to determine if such is in progress. I appreciate all of the responses to my inquiry. It appears that I have been overly cautious and that the activity in question is harmless.

Attached is a screen shot of my network actiivty during one of these Mysterious Activity events.


xgdude

 

[Qdos]

BITS is the Microsoft 'Background Intelligent Transfer Service' which, for example, services your Windows Update requirements and therefore can happen without express user intervention...

 

[xgdude]

Mysterious Activity

Thanks for the explanation... How do I determine if the activity that I am seeing is the result of a BITS operation?

 

[Qdos]

Have a look at the following M$ page which explains BITS in more detail...

About BITS

 

[FliGi7]

Honestly, you could spend years of your life investigating "mysterious" activity performed by Windows. I really wouldn't look too far into this. It's not worth spending your time and effort worrying about. It could be BITS. It could be normal network ARP requests and responses. It could be antivirus checking for updates. It could be a bunch of completely normal things.

If your computer starts freezing up or you start seeing activity happening on the screen, then you can start to get concerned.

 

[Britton30]

It would be more productive to question what we would call an orange if it were blue.

 

[xgdude]

Mysterious Activity

Just out of curiosity I started looking around in my computer for clues as to what might be the cause of all of the activity previously described. I was looking around in msconfig at the processes list and found one that looked out of place called Akamai Net Sessions Interface. I did a little looking around in Google and discovered that this program is essentially a "peer to peer" file sharing application which was deposited on my computer without my consent with the installation of some other software not identified.

Here is alink to one of the sites I found concerning this program:
Ramblings on discoveries in Task Manager - General Discussion - LEGO Universe Forums at MMORPG.com

Think this could be my answer to my Mysterious Activity ?

 

[4wd]

I had similar issues, Akamai & others were all over the place. Am using the excellent Network Activity Indicator from System utilities, password recovery and network tools, miscellaneous software with source code as visual monitor. Any suspicious activity (or programs phoning home 10 times a day), a quick ip check in Resource Monitor, do some whois, then find the culprit hidden in the pc, cleaning it out or if legitimate (but unwanted), block with firewall. Surely other or better tools out there, but this works perfect.

 

[Britton30]

Just out of curiosity I started looking around in my computer for clues as to what might be the cause of all of the activity previously described. I was looking around in msconfig at the processes list and found one that looked out of place called Akamai Net Sessions Interface. I did a little looking around in Google and discovered that this program is essentially a "peer to peer" file sharing application which was deposited on my computer without my consent with the installation of some other software not identified.

Here is alink to one of the sites I found concerning this program:
Ramblings on discoveries in Task Manager - General Discussion - LEGO Universe Forums at MMORPG.com

Think this could be my answer to my Mysterious Activity ?

Absolutely, see here About Akamai
It may be a download manager of sorts for games or any of several type of download. I have had bits on my PC in the form of advertising cookies and is not welcome. CCleaner will rid you of its cookies and maybe Revo Uninstaller the program.
EDIT: More info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akamai_Technologies although it sounds like an ad for Akamai it lists some customers they have. Maybe you visited some.

Links for both in my sig. There are links to free versions, they are fine.

 

[Corazon]

It would be more productive to question what we would call an orange if it were blue.

A blu-range!

 

[xgdude]

Mysterious Activity

I decided to uninstall the Akamai Net Processing program and also uninstall all of the programs I never or seldom use anymore in hopes of getting that one program that gave me Akamai in the first place. This is to prevent it being reinstalled should I open the culprit file. Guess what, no more Mysterious Activity.

I want to thank all who have so generously gave of their time and expertise to help out another who called out for help. You are generouslyappreciated.

Looks like it's time to close this thread..

xgdude

 

[xgdude]

Mysterious Activity

not so fast there xgdude, it's alive and well !!!
yep that's correct, I was in the control pane and just happened to notice an item I missed before.there it is "Akamai Netsessions control". Now, my qustion is this, How can I remove the control panel item and why is it there in the first place?
What harm to my system could be the result if I clicked on the control panel item?
should I expect it to really control Akamai Netsessions on my pc and allow me to remove it? has anyoneelse had this run in with this program.

 

[Britton30]

Did you give CCleaner or Revo a shot?

 

[dsperber]

I don't have any "active" Akamai services or threads on my system.

But I do have some "remnants" of Akamai on my machine that appear to have been installed in conjunction with the installation of Adobe Flash in browsers (both Firefox v8 and IE v9).

Actually, I don't think Flash is supported in either of these latest browser versions. That's either the reason I don't see any Akamai services on my system, or perhaps you have something else installed on your that's really the underlying culprit.

So perhaps you might try upgrading either/both to the most recent version, if you're using an older version with Flash installed.

Or, maybe uninstall Adobe Flash??