Bandwidth usage when idle

[Carlos]

I've just installed a bandwidth monitor and have noticed that i am receiving kilobytes when my system is idle(only about 1 or 1.5KB/S). Even when there are no IE windows open the counter keeps going up. I thought there must be some other program accessing the internet so set Norton to block all traffic. Looked at the counter and it's still going up even though with the block on I can't look at any web pages. Any ideas?

[MTIH1992]

many background processes like windows update/Microsoft update all keep checking for updates. Also, its most likely to keep the internet connection 'alive' otherwise it would have to re-connect everytime u came back to your computer from a 5 or more minute break.