newbie home router Q

[news.virgin.net]

Hi,
I have a D-link router on Virgin media cable (UK). Connected to this, my
laptop on which runs PCguard on which I found the following log entry :

tcp Incoming 216.89.80.51 80 192.168.0.8 4754 21/12/2007 17:43:26

I've not got the router set up to send anything incoming to this laptop so
why is there incomming traffic ?

When I http://216.89.80.51 I get :

<af>
<r c="ok"/>
</af>

Thanks in advance.

Bruce.

[Sebastian G.]

news.virgin.net wrote:

> I've not got the router set up to send anything incoming to this laptop so
> why is there incomming traffic ?

Counter question: Why do you expect that there should be no incoming traffic?

[news.virgin.net]

> > I've not got the router set up to send anything incoming to this laptop
so
> > why is there incomming traffic ?
>
>
> Counter question: Why do you expect that there should be no incoming
traffic?

The incoming IP is on the NET, not the LAN and I've not got the router set
to forward any traffic from the WAN to this computer.

[Sebastian G.]

news.virgin.net wrote:

And why do you think that explicit forwarding is the only way the router may
forward traffic?

[news.virgin.net]

Because that is what the aliens beamed into my brain...

[Sebastian G.]

news.virgin.net wrote:

> Because that is what the aliens beamed into my brain...

At least you finally admin that you don't fully understand NAT.

Well, short to say, there're many reasons:

- triggered by a client from the inside
- related connections according to some heuristic rules
- related connections according to protocol parsing
- full forwarding on 1:1 mapping
- UPnP
...

However, the most reasonable assumption is that your system is compromised
(due to abuse of Outlook Express as a newsreader) and has reconfigured your
router to forward everything.