Cable Modem going crazy

Hey guys i recently vised my parents who have a 5 computer network using a netgear RT314 router and sharing cable service. As i was on one of the computers next to the router i noticed the Data LED on the toshiba cable modem and the internet/link led on the router were blinking like crazy, indicating internet traffic, and the funny thing was none of the computers were turned on, which led me to assume that my network was being scanned. I didnt think anyting of it because i know, especially wit an always on connection that its not uncommon to have your ports scanned. However i noticed this activity DID NOT STOP, and the weird thing about it was when i have all of my computers on, as well as the router and cable modem blinking like crazy, i will all of a sudden , the router will show activity to a computer that no one is on! This kinda scared me. I ran a virus scan on all of the computers and found nothing, but im still worried as to what could be going on. Any ideas???

Your probably just getting scanned a lot.

See http://www.dshield.org/ (it also shows if your IP has been used a lot for scanning others)
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http://www.cert.org/current/current_activity.html
http://www.incidents.org/
http://www.incidents.org/cid/query/top_10ip_7.php

[This message has been edited by DVNT1 (edited 08-27-2001).]

That's normal! My cable modem is also getting a TONS of incoming traffic and zonealarm is alerting me about port scans every few minutes. Most of it is from within my subnet, meaning that there are a lot of infected zombie computers in my local loop.

Just make sure your parents are using an up-to-date virus scanner and install a firewall (zonealarm is an excellent firewall... and its FREE!). Other than that, there isn't much you can do. Securing other people's computers is nearly impossible.