Why are my devices linking up via bonjour without being asked to?

We have a house full of Apple devices, phones, ipads, laptops. I've been having trouble in the mornings with traffic congestion (I think). Unable to load email, etc. I look at my trusty Net Analyzer to see what's going on under the surface and there's a veritable grand central station of bonjour connections between the various Apple devices. I don't know what they're all for, but there's Apple Remote desktop, IChat, Remote Frame Buffer, Secure File Transfer Protocol, Compagnion Link, when I talk to the family nobody is chatting or transferring files, they're looking at Facebook (or trying to) reading email (or trying to) reading webcomics (or trying to). What I don't get is why would the phone be connected to the laptop, instead of to the modem? Why would the laptops be connected to each other? I could see file transfer for webcomics I guess, but why transfer them from laptop to laptop?