I'm wondering whether your BOINC profile (default,home,school or work) is set too low. The default is only 0.1 days between network connections, which is only 2.4 hours worth of work. Your queue would probably drain completely before getting any more.

BOINC 5.8 and up have changed the scheduler somewhat, but you should be able to set up to 2.5 days or so between network connections. Mine is running smoothly at that number and usually sends one or two workunits when one or two is sent in. How many others are waiting depends on that number and how many your computer is estimated to complete.

The WCG estimates are fairly close. Some projects have estimates 1000% or more higher than how much they actually use, and don't change when BOINC runs some and is supposed to "learn" and improve them. Those projects are difficult to mix with others, because they hog the whole queue for 1 workunit.

If the number is set much higher, the very complex scheduler seems to bust a gut. It will then revert to draining the queue again completely before downloading more. This seems counterintuitive, but that's what happens.

Forcing an update doesn't accomplish anything unless you have a finished workunit to report or you have made this or some other change to your profile that it needs to know about. Otherwise, the change will always be picked up when the next workunit is sent in.

I told you it was weird.

But if you want to check it more closely, you can always check with WireShark.

If I remember correctly, the firewall that has problems with this is ZoneAlarm. Are you using ZoneAlarm? If so, you can write off the "activity" as bogus.

Here's what's happening: BOINC uses the loopback address. It's just like sending stuff over the Internet, but it doesn't leave your machine. However, it seems that different network drivers catch the local packets at different stages. Your rather complicated network setup may affect this, too. I'm trying to remember how Windows Internet Connection Sharing handles this.

Sorry, I'm too tired. I'll research it for you tomorrow, if you want.

I'm using ZoneAlarm on the Win98 system and it works fine. If there's a new release or something, I just say "allow" when it asks about the BOINC behaviour. It never bothers me again.

Let's see what it says over there in program control:
BOINC Client has trusted access and internet access
BOINC Manager for Windows has trusted access
BOINC Screensaver has trusted access

That seems clear enough.

Don't increase the network connect. 3 is about the max, and I have dropped back to 2.5. 4.5 is definitely too much.

If it is set too high, it will finish everything. It will then download more in chuncks of up to 10, separated by the 5 minute wait time for each chunk.

Although Justakiwibird has been with us since early 2006, the default for new members has been for a while now 0.3 days i.e. 7.2 hours buffering (early 2007). This was done so members could continue to crunch even with longer server outages. Typically that would happen during Sunday Maintenance Run, but last few weeks has been good.