That didn't answer my question at all.

You said above:

> That's not true. Install and run wireshark then dial all you want, there will always be traffic every other minute or so to one of Redmond's servers from just idling.

I literally did exactly what you said. Shutdown all third party applications on a Windows 10 Pro machine, loaded Wireshark 2.2.3, filtered out all LAN traffic/broadcast traffic/etc and watched. Didn't see any traffic at all going to Microsoft nor anyone else, it is still running now and not a peep.

Now I have no doubt that if I waited long enough I would, since I have Windows Update enabled, use Microsoft for time synchronisation, and a handful of other things. But it definitely isn't "every other minute." I cannot reproduce that.