TCP/IP system tray icon

[si_69]

Hi

 

I hope someone can answer my question for me ?

 

Can someone tell me why the TCP/IP icon in the system tray flashes and sends and recieves bytes when im not actually doing anything on the internet

 

for example, i can turn my pc on and not even start up IE, yet there will always be a few bytes sent and recieved

 

hope you can help

 

Simon

[Tony D]

What do you mean by TCP/IP icon? Can you be more specific? Maybe hover over the icon and let us know what program it's looking at.

 

As long as you're connected to the Internet, several programs may be calling home for whatever reason. This would show up as send and received bytes. For each send or receive byte, there is a corresponding byte telling TCP/IP that the byte was received corrrectly or if not, to resend the info.

 

Now if you have programs like Windows Update set to check for updates automatically, they may be contacting Microsoft to see if there are updates. Same goes for other programs like your anti-virus, Firefox, Acrobat Reader, Flash, Java, your email client and more than I can think of.

 

Then there's malware that shouldn't be on your computer. It may be trying to contact its maker for whatever purposes its creator designed it for. Malware protection applications are designed to detect such programs.

 

If you have a two-way firewall (Zone Alarm comes to mind), it can be configured to alert you when ANY program is trying to access the Internet.

[AdvancedSetup]

It is doing it because YOUR SYSTEM is always working even though you're not.

 

There are dozens of background processes and call to the network. If you install some tools for Registry and Protocol analysis or use a sniffer to scan your box for activity you'll see that your box is always either asking or telling information. It is quite normal (to some degree) If your box is sending out lots of data all the time then it could be infected and you may want to run some tools to check on that.

[Dalo Harkin]

There is normally a 2:1 ratio with sent and received cant remember which way it is but if you are out by a lot then as Advanced suggested you may have malware/spyware running that is sending info.

[AdvancedSetup]

After you have been on for a few minutes and if you're not running any specific Internet enabled application then your icon should not show data being sent except once every so often. If it is continuous after being logged on for say 5 minutes and not running any applications (no Instant Messengers, no auto update programs, no e-mail, no browser, etc) then there is something wrong.

 

As for a 2:1 ratio, it might be in some book or on some Web page, but TCP/IP doesn't really work in that tight of a ratio. It really depends on what you're doing as to which packets are more. Here is an example from just downloading a lot. But if you were uploading a lot the values would be reversed.

Bottom line - after a few minutes and you're not doing anything it should slow down and then just sporadically light up once in a while.

 

http://kixhelp.com/wr/images-freepchelp/lan.jpg

[Dalo Harkin]

Were not talking about downloading were talking about general usage, and a 2:1 ratio is the MAX it should be unless you are using heavy traffic i.e downloading or playing online games.