When using a packet sniffer, I notice a lot of packets being sent to a bunch of ISPs (such as axion.ca, wanadoo.fr/orange?, bresnan.net, zebra.lt) usually all at the same time. Here's a screenshot of the hosts in SmartSniff. I happen to live in none of these hosts' countries, so this is very strange.
Is this a normal thing, or maybe a side-effect of an infection?
Given the uncommon high ports and that the hostnames look like IP addresses from normal consumers I would suggest that this is peer-to-peer traffic. There are several legal or mostly legal programs which are doing peer-to-peer like Skype, Bittorrent and other file exchange programs. But peer-to-peer techniques are also used by malware like Zeus.
Since it is not known what you deliberitly run on your system one can not decide if these connections are caused by software which you run intentionally or by software which you run unknowingly, i.e. malware.
