[Seabee_]

I noticed that a few days ago, my firewall was going crazy blocking all these attempts from other computers trying to send packets to mine. I'm actually not sure what this means, but it worries me because this has never happened before. ZoneAlarm blocks them every time, but I want to stop it all together.
I've also taken note of an outgoing packet coming from netBIOs, and a few incoming from the same address as my ISP.

Like I said, I really don't know what all this means, but I did a check using Avast, AdAware, Spybot S&D, and HijackThis and found nothing unusual. I'm at a loss to explain the cause. But it doesn't seem to be anything in my computer. I'm using OpenDNS, if that has anything to do with it. I've tried removing it, but it didn't work. I've also noticed that when I change my IP, they seem to slow down.

Can someone tell me what's going on and if there's a way to stop this?

[Elvandil]

How do you "change your IP"? The IP is assigned by your ISP.

Incoming and outgoing packets are constant and not unusual. The ISP may be checking to see if the connection is idle in order to disconnect you or reassign the IP to someone else.

Bots crawl the net all the time gathering data, email addresses, looking for open ports, and some "keep-alive" software even tries to connect randomly to IP's in order to mimic activity so the connection is not terminated.

What type of "packets" are they? have you changed any settings in ZA about when you want to be notified?

[Seabee_]

I'm using a dial-up connection, so every time I disconnect and reconnect, I get assigned a new IP. I'm not sure what "packets" are so, I wouldn't know anything about that, sorry. Below is a screen shot of what my firewall looks like. If you notice the times and IPs, some of them happen consecutively. http://xs233.xs.to/xs233/08486/firewall-screenie373.jpg

[lunarlander]

Basically, there is no way of stopping it. Because it originates from the outside.