Okay, here is what I have done so far;
- I have turned off CF
- cleared the DB
- restarted all services (working).
I also made one change to my ASUS router:
Excessive requests for dns.msftncsi.com - #5 by DanSchaper
I know this is probably not a good approach for the ASUS router, and I may have to reverse it later, but we shall see for now. Everything is functional, and we shall see if it stays up and running.