Older versions of Zone Alarm's tray icon gave a fairly reliable indication of traffic, but later (v9 onwards) don't. It still flashes some of the time, but often stays motionless even when I know I am downloading something. I saw plenty of complaints on their forum when this retrograde step was introduced. Even more irritatingly the old Netgear DG 834 router had a re-assuring flashing "traffic" LED, yet on my newer DGN 2200 all the lights remain constant, regardless of activity. It also takes much longer to boot up...
"MAC address filtering is a total waste of time"
Milo, care to elaborate? I'm always willing to learn! I do have static DHCP as well.