Suspicious Ethernet (Internet?) activity?

My network router/modem has an led the blinks whenever there is ethernet activity ... and it blinks a lot, even if have no open apps except the finder and the dashboard ... and even when my mac is the only local net member (other than the router itself) powered on.
I've got the firewall up (both in my router and in the Mac) and set for maximum security.
Though this is probably legitimate stuff going on in the background, paranoid me needs to know exactly what's going on.
If there is a console log that shows all incoming and outgoing traffic, I cannot figure out which one it is. If there is some way to monitor this traffic from the console or Terminal, I'd sure like to know what it is ... but I haven't been able to figure it out from online help yet.
I know there are some commercial products out there (eg, Little Snitch) that help one detect unauthorized traffic ... but surely OS X has some native monitoring capabilities I can tap into.
Please advise or point me in the right direction to read learn about it.

Hi, as Templeton-Peck mentions, they all do that. But for some ease of mind there are a couple of things you might want to try. You are already aware of Little Snitch which does indeed let you know what is trying to go out (and some is legitimate). I use this and on one or two occasions it can be a little too intrusive, particularly if you use services like MSN, Skype and others. Even RSS feeds need the occasional acceptance from a user.
For outgoing, you already have a firewall and, from what you write, it seems that you may have clicked on the Advanced button and turned on Invisibility: is that so? You may also want to consider turning on the Firewall logging; but remember for a log to be useful, it has to be read. Running through occasionally can reveal a lot of information about who (companies for example) is trying to probe -- and that may well be some of those flashes that you see.

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