Boinc appears to be constantly contacting my modem to ensure that it is online, or that the net is available to it. Is this necessary or is their a way that this habit can be cut down

Where do you see this behaviour? If in Zone Alarm, then do know this is a false reading. BOINC its parts (boinc.exe and boincmgr.exe) communicate with each other on port 31416 on the local computer only (IP address 127.0.0.1). This can be seen by some firewalls such as Zone Alarm as constant network or internet access, when it isn't.

Try adding boinc.exe and boincmgr.exe in your firewall's trusted zone or DMZ and this behaviour should go away.

If it's something else you see, please be more elaborate as to what you see. We can't see what you see, so you have to explain as best you can what it is you see.

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Thanks Ageless.

Yeppers, it was ZoneAlarm being over protective. Now it is as quiet as a church mouse since I followed your advice and added it to the trusted zone and it has gone "beddy-bies

Now... about the time it takes for this site to load (don't worry, that's directed towards my darling ISP GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

You're welcome. :-)
I'm glad it was something easy to solve. Sorry to hear about your slow ISP, though.

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Furlozza, I too use Zone Alarm (Security Suite 8.0.059.000) and have tried adding these programs to the trusted zone, along with every other program access/network address/port combination I can think of. And I still get the network activity heart beat indicator which is driving me nuts.

While searching I have found many other references to the same problem with ZA. But you seem to be the only person to have been able to fix it. Could you please describe the settings you made in more detail. Greatly appreciated.