so, i ate very slowly, trying to avoid the issue, and have finally logged into the teksavvy account.

it's not updated, yet.

what does my modem say, though, for the evening? well, it's interesting:

wan: 718810 packets ~ 1 gb

lan: 389351 packets ~ 0.57 gb

so, i'm receiving almost twice as many packets from the internet as i'm transmitting locally. that should be wrong....

i watched a little bit of youtube, so i can handle if today is in the middle of my normal usage range - 1-2 gb, total, from the start of the day. the lan option seems more accurate, if not somewhat higher than i'd guess. we'll see what the site says.

i should get a full log for today, and we'll compare.

what if i can explain the situation by pointing to this external wan traffic? can i do any diagnostics on this modem? can i find logs?

i've been pointing out for months that it seems like somebody is trying to control my machine remotely. is this some actual proof of it, if i can get into the modem and find it? 

if i turn the modem off, and the attacker has my mac address or ip address, will their attempts to log into my machine end up as traffic logged by the isp?

i've turned the pc off for the night. i'm going to work on this, instead.

again: i wish i didn't have to do this, but i clearly do.