Reliability of bandwith usage measuring

Hi,

sorry if this has been discussed or commented ad nauseam, but a quick
googling did not show any reply to my question:

how reliable is the ISP's measurement of my bandwith usage? I do not
download much and am happy with a cheapo IDNet contract, which shows
typical daily usage below the the < 30 MB level. But occasionally a
"peak" of up to >1Gb downloaded/day has popped up on the ISP's
web-accessible bandwith measurement statistics, without any
corresponding activity from my side.

Anyone else seen this?

THanks
--
ts in Surrey // to send e-mail, remove vehicle

Ato_Zee <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

> MS$ Service Packs can auto download and take a sizeable
> chunk of bandwidth, as can other software like anti virus
> updates. MS$ is the main culprit, unless you have some
> infection, or software running without your knowledge.
> Worth checking with Windoze Task Manager to see
> if you can identify all that's
> running, Google for anything that you can't account for.

Thanks for your reply. I'm a Mac user, but will check a mate that
occasionally logs onto the net with a PC. Does Windows show a list of
most recently updated software somewhere? (I might have known the answer
if I paid more attention to the updates of my WinPC at work, but that's
not my responsibility . . )
--
ts in Surrey // to send e-mail, remove vehicle

ts wrote:
> Ato_Zee <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
>> MS$ Service Packs can auto download and take a sizeable
>> chunk of bandwidth, as can other software like anti virus
>> updates. MS$ is the main culprit, unless you have some
>> infection, or software running without your knowledge.
>> Worth checking with Windoze Task Manager to see
>> if you can identify all that's
>> running, Google for anything that you can't account for.
>
> Thanks for your reply. I'm a Mac user, but will check a mate that
> occasionally logs onto the net with a PC. Does Windows show a list of
> most recently updated software somewhere? (I might have known the answer
> if I paid more attention to the updates of my WinPC at work, but that's
> not my responsibility . . )

I fond that when my wife leaves her Mac on pointed at a certain weather
site that has continuously updating radar maps...the graph shows
traffic all night long.

On 16 Dec, 00:01, exbn-p...@deaVOLVO.spamcon.org (ts) wrote:
> Hi,
>
> sorry if this has been discussed or commented ad nauseam, but a quick
> googling did not show any reply to my question:
>
> how reliable is the ISP's measurement of my bandwith usage? I do not
> download much and am happy with a cheapo IDNet contract, which shows
> typical daily usage below the the < 30 MB level. But occasionally a
> "peak" of up to >1Gb downloaded/day has popped up on the ISP's
> web-accessible bandwith measurement statistics, without any
> corresponding activity from my side.
>
> Anyone else seen this?
>
> THanks
> --
> ts in Surrey // to send e-mail, remove vehicle

A few thoughts:-

I have some doubts of the accuracy of my ISP's statistics. My daily
usage pattern is pretty constant, but occasionally the figures are
well above or below my norm for no known reason. I suspect they
sometimes forget to flip the switch to "free" after midnight, or do it
late, which would be a pain if I happened to choose that night to
download something huge.

I too am normally <30Mb/day, but in November I had some mystery
1-200Mb daytime "peaks" that cumulatively took me close to my limit
and I had to severely curtail my daytime activities for the final
week.

I can't find any detailed activity log in my (non-wireless) router or
in XP.

I discovered that BBC iPlayer has file sharing enabled by default and
haven't seen the peaks since I disabled it. I should have been
suspicious when it kept popping up to say I didn't have enough disk
space even though I hadn't asked it to download anything. But would it
fetch and fileshare something I hadn't specifically downloaded? Maybe
a red herring, and it's been installed (but never used) since well
before the November peaks.

My employer's support desk has been known to send me >1GB of updates,
mainly from M$, without warning -- they don't understand the situation
of teleworkers. I keep them out by not connecting to the VPN for any
longer than I need to.

I've noted using the Task Manager's Networking tab that webcam viewers
(which would include weather satellites) continually update even if
the page is in a Firefox tab you're not looking at. Rotating adverts
may do the same.

Some people don't realise their scanner/camera defaults to enormous
JPEGs, and if you browse a site of these, the bandwidth quickly mounts
up.

Chris

ts <exbn-(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

> how reliable is the ISP's measurement of my bandwith usage? I do not
> download much and am happy with a cheapo IDNet contract, which shows
> typical daily usage below the the < 30 MB level. But occasionally a
> "peak" of up to >1Gb downloaded/day has popped up on the ISP's
> web-accessible bandwith measurement statistics, without any
> corresponding activity from my side.

Thanks to all for helpful suggestions. Some further info: wired router,
so no unauthorised hijacking of my account. Computers off during the
night, all auto-update options I am aware of of system software or
applications are disabled. I do not tend to watch animations, videos or
graphics intensive multimedia web pages. Sounds boring, but there is
much info out there that doesn't need flash players to get the message
through!

Looking back through my comm's with my ISP, once their mair server was
down, which caused my computer to freeze for some time when trying to
check for mail. This resulted in a 300 MB peak on the bandwith
statistics, which the support guys were happy to remove from my monthly
use quota. Thus my subsequent suspicion that attempted traffic may be
registered as transferred data.

I take the point that some popular interactive webpages can initiate
more traffic than expected, but I doubt they would generate more than
say 50 MB?


--
ts in Surrey // to send e-mail, remove vehicle
K-RS 8v, 80/7

ts wrote:
> ts <exbn-(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
>> how reliable is the ISP's measurement of my bandwith usage? I do not
>> download much and am happy with a cheapo IDNet contract, which shows
>> typical daily usage below the the < 30 MB level. But occasionally a
>> "peak" of up to >1Gb downloaded/day has popped up on the ISP's
>> web-accessible bandwith measurement statistics, without any
>> corresponding activity from my side.
>
> Thanks to all for helpful suggestions. Some further info: wired router,
> so no unauthorised hijacking of my account. Computers off during the
> night, all auto-update options I am aware of of system software or
> applications are disabled. I do not tend to watch animations, videos or
> graphics intensive multimedia web pages. Sounds boring, but there is
> much info out there that doesn't need flash players to get the message
> through!
>
> Looking back through my comm's with my ISP, once their mair server was
> down, which caused my computer to freeze for some time when trying to
> check for mail. This resulted in a 300 MB peak on the bandwith
> statistics, which the support guys were happy to remove from my monthly
> use quota. Thus my subsequent suspicion that attempted traffic may be
> registered as transferred data.
>
> I take the point that some popular interactive webpages can initiate
> more traffic than expected, but I doubt they would generate more than
> say 50 MB?
>
>
huh. Don't be so sure.

Just looked at my router stats and whatever it was my wife was doing
yesterday evening is a 600Kbps average for 4 hours. I make that 823
Mbytes in total. Probably having the weather radar site open all
evening. In the background


We AVERAGE 23kbps on two machines here.