537 connections to my router?

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

I get back after a 2hr family event to my pc that has been idling.. nothing opened. I open my browser, check my router and there are 537 connections to my pc. didn't catch how many were active but should this be a concern? And if so how can I monitor more closely what is connecting to my pc, etc.

Thanks

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Can you be more specific about the information you're getting from your router.

 

[bononos]

Do you have a torrent client running or some other file sharing app?

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

No, the machine was idle for 2+hrs with NOTHING running or opened.

 

[lxskllr]

What O/S? Win8 seems to have a lot of active stuff in the start menu. It could be polling mail, checking weather, polling facebook... You have about 4.5 connections per minute. That's not unreasonable if you have a lot of chatty stuff going.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Zero things were open, it was idling for 2+hrs

 

[lxskllr]

Zero things were open, it was idling for 2+hrs

What I'm getting at is things might be open whether you're looking at them or not. I see 4 things on my desktop that use the network whether I'm at the computer or not. If you have Win8, for example, there's can be a bunch of live stuff in the start menu. It doesn't care if you're there, it'll still be using the network.

IOW, the start menu will still connect even if it isn't open. If you aren't using Win8, or some other O/S that has network functionality, then it's more of a mystery.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Win7 64. Why don't we have control over things like this?

EDIT: but even in task manager no application was running. :hmm:

 

[lxskllr]

You could try Wireshark, and see what's connecting to where.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

I don't know how to read the results from Wireshark for what I need. Is it a steep learning curve?

 

[lxskllr]

Is it a steep learning curve?

Yea, probably. I've only played around with it. It'll give you an idea of what kind of traffic is going over the network though, and where it's coming from/to. Something like a software firewall might give you friendlier logging.

Edit:
For kicks, a full A/V and Malwarebytes scan would be worth a try to see if there's any low hanging fruit. You can read the docs on some network analyzing software while it's working.

 

[KillerBee]

TCPView is a good tool to use
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897437

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Thanks all

 

[alkemyst]

Win7 64. Why don't we have control over things like this?

EDIT: but even in task manager no application was running. :hmm:

Processes can use network resources.

 

[John Connor]

After I download something using P2P and close the torrent client I will get a lot of connection attempts in the router. So long as SPI is on in the router you shouldn't have a problem. I find most are from China.