My broadband usage - cannot believe it!

Chorlie

My sister is with BT and has the same issue, she used to use a Three Dongle with 5GB allowance and upgraded to BT Internet with 10GB which she was over within 2 weeks and couldn't understand why, so after a couple of months upgraded to the 20GB and she was still going over that.

She now has upgraded to unlimited and last month used over 40Gb, but still can't unstand how she has gone from using less than 5Gb a month to over 40Gb.

I've had a 11Gb package (with NDO, now Namesco) for the last 5yrs and this last month has been the first time I've gone over it (by just over 1Gb) and they wanted to charge my an extra £2.40 (£1 +VAT per Gb) which was fair enough (better than BT's £5 for upto 5Gb), I phoned them up to upgrade my allowance since I'm using iPlayer, YouTube more etc (and with the updates seem to be getting bigger all the time) it was only going to cost me around an extra £2.50 for an extra 15Gb (taking me to 26Gb). They kindly not only waived the charge for going over this month but also increase my allowance by 15Gb without any extra change since I was a loyal customer......

If only every company had this attitude.

DCFC79

Chorlie and andy have you 2 installed a download monitor at all ? not used 1 myself but they might give an indication of whats going on in terms of where its being used, just an idea.

bod1467

Bear in mind that unless the monitor can use SNMP to query the router (and the router supports this) then any monitor will only advise what THAT COMPUTER is using as bandwidth. If there is more than one computer or device using the network then you'd need equivalent monitors for all of them.

An alternative (if your router never disconnects or reboots) is to check the router stats - these usually include bandwidth figures (down and up) that are cumulative since the last reboot/reconnect. If you record these values on a given date, then record them again after a given period (e.g. 7 days) then you'll see an estimate of your weekly usage. This should tell you if the ISP usage figures are reasonable or erroneous.

andygb

DCFC79 wrote: »

Chorlie and andy have you 2 installed a download monitor at all ? not used 1 myself but they might give an indication of whats going on in terms of where its being used, just an idea.

Is there a safe site to download one from, because I am a bit paranoid about just downloading things.

andygb

bod1467 wrote: »

An alternative (if your router never disconnects or reboots) is to check the router stats - these usually include bandwidth figures (down and up) that are cumulative since the last reboot/reconnect. If you record these values on a given date, then record them again after a given period (e.g. 7 days) then you'll see an estimate of your weekly usage. This should tell you if the ISP usage figures are reasonable or erroneous.

How do I actually check the router stats, because I already know that the connection speeds for our area are pretty rubbish (both up and downloading).

John_Gray

I would install Networx, and keep an eye on daily and weekly usage...

bod1467

andygb wrote: »

How do I actually check the router stats, because I already know that the connection speeds for our area are pretty rubbish (both up and downloading).

Depends on the router. Have you never logged in to the admin page on your router before? Open a web browser and go to the appropriate address; examples below:

http://192.168.0.1
http://192.168.1.254
http://10.0.0.1

FOX_HOUND

John_Gray wrote: »

I would install Networx, and keep an eye on daily and weekly usage...

Just downloaded that. Can it tell me how much my son's xbox live is using?

I saw UL and DL. What is that please?

vaio

upload & download

mikey72

Just checked mine, us, 2 kids, continuously on facebook, youtube, iplayer, we use about 2Gb a day.