G+_William Burlingame Posted March 1, 2014 Share Posted March 1, 2014 My Feb. data usage hit 292GB. Comcast's cap is 300GB. The Comcast agent said if I upgraded to the next level, it would bump the cap to 350GB. I checked the Comcast site and it said I still had the 300GB cap, but my download speed is naow 50Mbps. It seems that option is only available in select markets and mine is not one of them. Is there a way to monitor the usage to see what the main culprit is? I have had a Netflix account for nearly 5 years , but I haven't come near the limit before last month. I do hove a college student living with us. I'd like to see what's going on before I make any accusations. How can I monitor the internet traffic? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Rob German Posted March 1, 2014 Share Posted March 1, 2014 Use a good anti-virus program. If you're on a PC,install Malwarebytes and download Crowdinspect to examine your running processes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Rob German Posted March 1, 2014 Share Posted March 1, 2014 and tell your kid to stop downloading from torrents and/or usenet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Joe Phelps Posted March 1, 2014 Share Posted March 1, 2014 I set our default Netflix playback quality to Medium. We can't really tell any difference in picture quality but the bandwidth consumption was cut in half. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Chris Hightower Posted March 1, 2014 Share Posted March 1, 2014 William Burlingame see the answers to the post from Louis Rigo Jr posted in this same forum a few hours earlier. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Rob German Posted March 1, 2014 Share Posted March 1, 2014 Assuming your Netflix usage has roughly stayed the same month-to-month, then something has changed and Netflix isn't the root cause of your bandwidth spike. Video and audio streaming services use compression technologies so that they use less bandwidth. Someone is likely downloading some large files. Or, a computer on your network has been compromised and is part of a botnet. Or both. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_bob H Posted March 1, 2014 Share Posted March 1, 2014 Yes, please see answer below but I can add that SNMP breaks down usage to router interface. On my AirPort Extreme: number of interfaces reported by the router: 8 interface #1 name is: mgi0 interface #2 name is: mgi1 interface #3 name is: mv0 interface #4 name is: mv1 interface #5 name is: lo0 interface #6 name is: wlan0 interface #7 name is: wlan1 interface #8 name is: bridge0 WiFi is the mgi's as I recall. So you can catch the culprit if they are the primary user on one interface. Totals/rates are reported. SNMP is pretty cool. I'm not sure if you can get the MAC address. Probably can. My GizWiz video: http://youtu.be/2I0m0Qd-GFU Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_610GARAGE Posted March 1, 2014 Share Posted March 1, 2014 I had the same problem with my cable company. They told me that I blew my data cap, but I was monitoring my data usage with vnstat on my pfsense router. And the totals didn't add up. Eventually they threatened to cut my internet unless I upgraded my internet speed. Upgraded, got a new modem for the faster speeds, and now I am streaming like crazy, and barley breaching my old data cap. The problem seemed to be that my old modem was disconnecting and reconnecting. This caused a bug in there system to over estimate the data usage. So basically, is your modem reconnecting a lot? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_William Burlingame Posted March 2, 2014 Author Share Posted March 2, 2014 Rob German I use Open DNS to block torrent, porn, etc. sites. The "kid" (age 22) is a grandson who had his own laptop when we decided to let him move in. He's here for an "attitude adjustment" . He's not using my Netflix account, but an account of a classmate. With all the other problems to be solved, overtly monitoring his computer usage is problematic at this time. Yes, if you extrapolate, I'm older than dirt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_William Burlingame Posted March 2, 2014 Author Share Posted March 2, 2014 Lesley Longhurst Thanks for the tip. I'll have to do some research to see the easiest way to implement an access point with that feature. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Ben Tyger Posted March 3, 2014 Share Posted March 3, 2014 Also if you have 50MB down, you probably have a larger data cap than you think. Unless you are in some the special trial location, this should be your data cap: http://customer.comcast.com/help-and-support/internet/data-usage-what-are-the-different-plans-launching Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_William Burlingame Posted March 3, 2014 Author Share Posted March 3, 2014 According the to table on page you linked to, the 350GB cap for Blast! only applies to Tucson. The next to last paragraph states that here in Huntsville, the cap for all tiers is 300GB. They will charge an additional $10 per each 50GB over that. I assume they will round up when you go over. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Rob German Posted March 3, 2014 Share Posted March 3, 2014 still - based on your usage there is no way you should be hitting a 300 GB cap. Something is causing it that you'll need to get to the bottom of if you want to stay under your cap. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ Posted March 5, 2014 Share Posted March 5, 2014 all yes... and you know what... I'm gonna have to address this in a future episode. (Might be too late for tomorrow... but definitely next week.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_William Burlingame Posted March 5, 2014 Author Share Posted March 5, 2014 Fr. Robert Ballecer, I'm looking forward to this topic being discussed on KH. I"ve made more calls to Comcast and I'm still getting mixed answers. The Comcast agents just don't seem to know! Do other ISPs have caps? I guess if TW doesn't, they will after the merger. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_William Burlingame Posted March 14, 2014 Author Share Posted March 14, 2014 Thanks for the Sky Dog(e) recommendation on Know How. I'll certainly consider getting one if I have any more problems with my data usage. So far this month it seems back on track. I did have a talk with the college student (my 22 year old grandson). I explained the problem and the possible outcomes. I warned him about Netflix binging. I don't think his sorry laptop is capable of serious gaming. It looks like my D-Link DIR-655 router has some limited filtering capability to restrict his usage, but not as powerful as Sky Dog. Either solution would require me to dig into the situation more extensively than I'd like to, but nice to see I have options that doesn't restrict my own usage. BTW, his laptop uses a WiFi connection. I'll also checkout WireShark. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_William Burlingame Posted March 14, 2014 Author Share Posted March 14, 2014 A question about the Whiteshark solution. I have a WiFi router connected to the cable modem. Do I put the hub between the cable modem and WiFi router? It looks like the Neatgear hub is $70 on Amazon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_William Burlingame Posted March 18, 2014 Author Share Posted March 18, 2014 I resurrected an old Laptop running Vista, bought a Netgear hub on eBay for $25 . I put the hub between the modem and the router and now I'm collecting data with Wireshark. Now all I have to do is to learn what to do with all that data I can collect. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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