Mysterious new WAN connection in control panel

I'm truly stumped -- I'm hoping one of my esteemed peers here has a rational reason why this is happening!

We have a wireless network adapter on our desktop PC at home (WinXP SP3). This connection is always listed in our network connections control panel. Today, we seem to have a new WAN connection listed as well. It comes on just after the PC connects to the wireless router. Most of the options are disabled. I tried 'connecting' to this WAN, but this fails... then the icon disappears for a couple of minutes.

I've submitted a ticket to my dsl provider to ask if this new connection is initiated by their network, but I'm writing this post on my company laptop, all the while watching my network connections control panel and seeing nothing out of the ordinary -- so it can't really be the ISP, can it?

So, the question is -- what is this WAN and who set it up? I have never ever set the desktop to share its network connection with other computers, and as far as I know the router is not even broadcasting... we're using the strongest wireless encryption as well (WPA2?), so I don't really believe that our PC's been hacked through the wireless conenection...

Does anyone have a reasonable explanation for this mysterious new WAN connection? :confused

Thanks in advance,
Nicole

 

do you have upnp enabled? could it be your router showing up?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Plug_and_Play

 

Hi smoking gun,

Thanks for your suggestion, I did have uPnP enabled, but then stopped the service, but still had connectivity.

Still no answer from the ISP -- I presume they'll ring during their normal office hours.