want to identify source of pings

Im a tad weak in networking issues, so please be patient.
Im on a cable ISP, and have much activity on my modem (activity light) even when im doing nothing. It seems to me that my PC is being pinged pretty often by someone (im sure its my ISP). My question is this: Is there a shareware program out their to help me identify the source of this "noise"? And furthermore, can i use my Linksys Router settings to reject these "solicitations", provided they are not needed to maintain internet connection? I just want to minimize the burden of my PC responding to pings that are not important. Please respond in layman tems.

Thanks!

Ok well you are using a router and that is what is responding (or not responding) to all the activity on the cable side of your network so your computer is only responding to information it has requested to the internet or from other (if there are) computers on your network nothing more. That is what a router does.

One thing you have to keep in mind too is that cable internet is usually connected via subnets. This means that there are a whole bunch of cable internet users in one group and they all connect back to one central location that the isp/cable company has hooked up to the internet. Because of this the activity lite will show activity not only when you are on the internet but when ever one of your neighbors are as well. This is just the nature of the beast.

As far as finding out what computers are trying to access your computer check the logs on your router and it will give you the ip address of the computer and what port they were trying to connect on. Most of the request you will see are for port 137, 113, and 139. These are just zombied computers on the internet or are script kiddies doing scans of your ip address range. Your firewall/router is doing it's job though and not letting any of that traffic in though so you don't really have to worry about it. If you are really paranoid you can install a software firewall like zonealarm. Also make sure you have an up to date antivirus. I use AVG. It is free and has free updates. Cheers.

I'd block ICMP coming into the router. If you have the IP from your logs you can use www.samspade.org to find out who the offender is.

There's really so much crap traffic that tracking it is pointless.

I have the same thing going on with my cable service. The light on the cable modem blinks like crazy, the 'WAN' light on my router blinks like crazy, but none of the activity lights on the switch blink unless somebody is using the internet. What this tells me is that there's loads of traffic slamming into my router, but none of it is getting through. This doesn't seem to affect my bandwidth too much, though. www.broadbandreports.com just showed my download as 2860 kbps and my upload as 383 kbps.

Thank You very Much!

I found your replys very instructive. I just now noticed that my PCs' activity light is not blinking like my cable modem light (i just got the router). Im not paranoid about "Who" is pinging me, i just dont want my weenie PC servicing a bunch of pings. One follow up question though; I have a Linksys router w/firewall. Do the firewall services execute inside the router hardware, or my PCs?

Thanks again!

if you want to block ping requests on a linksys router go to the management web page of the router to the advanced tab and enable "Block WAN Requests"...

"Block WAN Request
This feature is designed to prevent users from attacking through the internet. When it is enabled, the router will drop both the unaccepted TCP request and ICMP packets from WAN site. The hacker will not find the router by pinging the WAN IP address."

The firewall services and connection to your Cable Provider are maintained by the router and are independent of your PC. The PC's that you have plugged into the router are then basically proxying thru the linksys router to go to the internet and incoming traffic is going to your router and then being routed to wherever it is supposed to go. Think of it this way, Your Linksys router is connected to the internet not you. If all your PC's exploded in a firey cataclysm your Linksys router would still be there faithfully maintaining your connection to your cable provider and the internet and your cable provider would still be charging you $$$.

The linksys router is able to act as a firewall due to the fact that unrequested incoming traffic is not forwarded to any PC on your network unless you choose to do so, or put a PC in a DMZ.

hope that helps clear things up :)