Hi! Ed,

In a message to All you wrote:

 EV> Would anyone know why I see the LED for one port on a Linksys BEFSX41
 EV> CAT-5 wired router and another port on the router blinking but the
 EV> WAN port LED isn't blinking.

That's okay if the router is a 'smart switch'.  It looks like LAN-only
traffic, if they're the only LEDs lighting up.

 EV> If I have had been using a XP pc for hours and decided to turn on
 EV> another pc, it looks like the second one is comparing notes with
 EV> the first pc that was already running when the second pc was turned
 EV> on.

Back in the old (early) days of netbios networking, all connected PCs had
to run an election to see who was the best at providing a 'master browser'
(server-like) function.  There is a setting in the Control Panel network
tool to stop this from happening.  It has to be done on each PC, BTW.  But
_one_ should be set as the master!  Otherwise, whenever a new PC joins the
network there will be an election.  Also, there will be a new election
every nn minutes.  (I don't know the value for 'nn', as it varies.)  If
you've manually set a master then there will not be any elections.

 EV> I can't figure out why I see this happening, can somebody ENLIGHTEN
 EV> me why I see these two LEDs blinking at each other?   Thanks!

There could be some file/printer sharing discussions going on between the
(two) connected PCs... maybe there's a whole gaggle of networking protocols
being negotiated.  Hence, the WAN port isn't involved.

Cheers,
Paul.

... A procrastinator's work is never done.
--- Paul's Win98SE VirtualBox