Brother in law called me today to say that he's received an email from BT saying he's used over 7GB of his 10GB allowance. Apart from the usual program updates that get downloaded and installed, nothing else has been downloaded.

He's going to call them about it as something isn't right.

 

I am sick of their Indian call centre, it is "British" Telecom, nothing against Indians just in this instance they cannot communicate as well, very good English but they work to a script and it is just frustrating, and they do not return calls.

So it seems it is not just me with this, going to ring tommorow and play bloody hell with them.

So far 213 mb in 27 hours according to the router, so not 6 gb in a day or anywhere near.

 

Watching this with interest because my parents use bt for their broadband and had to upgrade to their next package because they go over their limit.

Now mum assures me she doesn't download films etc and I believe her.

If anyone can help, please pm me as bt keep charging them £5 a gb and they really insist they don't go over their limit and they can't afford to keep chucking money away.

My dad had an operation on the NHS which went wrong and has left him disabled and unable to work (another story which I will post up) so money is tight but internet is handy to keep in touch with the family.

 

Lou, read the links listed, join the forum and add your parents experiences, seems like the tip of the iceberg has been exposed, either their usage software is getting its sums wrong or the router is, the other option is that they are knowlingly bumping up usage stats so they can charge additional fees, I couldnt imagine the usage we had in a house of five people using it fairly intensively for various things so no it doesnt sound right that older people who just sound like occasional users are going over.

I think the router figures are correct, they correspond with the monitor I have going on the pc.

Tehy really need to answer this, either the router is wrong so it is defective and misleading or the website is, either way, the two should correspond, exactly for the same time period.


Sent an email to Watchdog.

 

You need to install a data logger on all PCs, it will log all Uplink and Downlink activity. Set them up to log and then at the end of the month compare these (actual figures) to the BT figures.

There will be one of 3 outcomes - in order of probability!

1) Someone in your home is using their computer a lot more than you think..
2) Someone outside your home has broken your security key..
3) BT are logging data incorrectly.

Re option 2 - if thats the case you can always honey trap them

And re option 1, I am sure you can get s/w that will limit usage.

HTH.

PS - your are lucky to get Infinity, we are in the middle of the city and we dont get it.

 

Just saw your post above mine pal, sounds like you already got it covered!

At the end of the day its all 1's and 0's and BT should know exactly whats gone through your connection, in fact they _will_ know.

 

Thanks for your reply Jacko, really appreciate it. With them battling with the NHS they don't need this on top. I will do all I can to help. Trouble is my mum is so battered and bruised with other things going on in her life this is the last thing she has energy to fight but I will try on her behalf.

Thank you.

 

id put money on someone using your wireless, it can be pretty easy to crack wifi depending on settings used etc

most routers show attached devices so have a nosey in there, and change your wifi password
make sure you are at least using wpa2 also
or just disable wifi if you arent using it

post above has good suggestions if you arent using wifi etc (and its def not on)

 

Had a nosey at my router, I am on WPA-PSK which is fairly hard to crack, I dont see any of the neighbours in range having the tech savvy to do it, being as I have set their wireless up in a fair few cases because they were not knowledgeable enough, dont think they will have advanced to cracking wireless security in the intervening period.

Its a fairly affluent road, they all have their own, there are no potential suspects, there are no lads with long hair, Linux T shirt, Snake in the front room, smoking roll ups and listening to Metal types, only probably 5 houses in range.

None of the attached devices logged look suspisious.

 

There are in the house,

5 phones, 3 connected to wifi, generally not for significant use.

3 Ipod Touches, occasional use

X box 360 - used quite a lot

PS3 - used once, around 2008 I think

Numerous PC's, generally old snotters, only one of the kids had one working for the last month and rarely uses it as it is slow and crap.

Nobody downloads anything like films, I dont bother and the kids arent that fussed, plus were told not under any circumstances to download films !


My VPN (Cisco ASA 5505) for work, not sure how much that uses, dont have laptop at home to test, I usually work one day a week from home.

 

bugger, then next guess would be malware or something on one of the pc's
maybe using you as a p2p peer etc?

worth tryin to log the network use on each PC as per post above

 

My parents live in the middle of nowhere though? Honestly the people just down the road don't strike as the sort to have their bandwidth.

 

Yes Dave, using the HH, its a black one, there is also a white Infinity modem.

this is what BT are reporting we have used, since the start of the month,




And I know this isnt perhaps that scientific but the router was rebooted yesterday and has loged the following, during the weekend where everyone has been around (raining) on the xbox, surfing and whatever,

This logged in 28 hours, pasted from Homehub Internet stats.

Data Transmitted/Received (MB) 229.3 / 63.6


So even if they mung it all together, i.e. upload and download, and if we ignore is more than a day, that gives us about 300 mb on a day at the weekend, call it 300 mb. it runs from month to month, so it gets reset on the first, we have had 13 days of Feb, so 13 times 300 = 3.9 GB, bear in mind that during the day on weekdays it doesnt really get used, kids are at school.

Add in my vpn access, 1 day a week, not sure how much that is but I am fairly certain its not 80 odd gb, there msay be the odd download (xbox game demos, occasional, only 20 gb drive that is pretty full anyway) but to be honest because it is throttled at the moment I dont think we could actually download stuff fast enough to make it ramp up as fast as it is.

See why it doesnt add up.

 

Got to be a virus or a bug at BT's end I would have thought.

 

The router stats are on BT's own hardware, doubt that has any vulnerability to virus's, if a virus were sending loads of data it would show up in there so my thinking is its BT's usage monitoring, funny how its in their favour.....

 

Your xbox at full pelt gaming mode - needs about 25KB/s IIRC.

Thats for gaming, with voice comms. So that could add upto anywhere from a few GB a month to perhaps 20 to 30GB if its used all day every day.

Very few people use their xbox 24/7 though so I expect your probably using about 15GB a month with heavy usage of say 6 to 8 hours a day.

Now, what does worry me is the number of other devices. All those devices will have apps and feeds, how much streaming content is used? Might be looking at at 4 or 5GB a month alone for that.

So now upto 20GB ish - no where near your apparent usage.

Something else must be using bandwidth - either its as said a hacker / P2P type situation (which I doubt as it would show in your router stats).

So, I think its perhaps from within. Your kids are prime suspects here.. funny how your usage dropped off all of a sudden in the router....

HD video.... if you have a high speed link you wont even notice yourself chomping through HD video... this stuff runs at massive data rates. 3Mb/s easily. So in an hour.... 10GB....

And because you have a high speed link you wont really notice any issues, if you try and play a video clip in HD on a normal 2MB connection it will just stutter and look a mess.

Something to think about.

 

Cheers Billy,

The router yesyerday, and a bit of the day before, in 28 hours logged about 300 megabytes, inc uploads and downloads, the BT Usage Checker, when I looked this mornign had gone up by 10 GB.

The Xbox usage is limited as the kids are at school and usually in the week, banned from it.

Quite an acheivement doing anything to download 10GB in a day when the speed drops as low as 0.2 mb/sec.

The kids arent downloaders as far as I know, one has two really old pcs that he doesnt really use, he uses mainly the front room desktop as it has decent graphics.

Eldest got a laptop last week but hadnt had one for ages (why the middle boy has two, he got donated eldests old one, dotn think its even been turned on)

Youngest doesnt have a pc in his room.

They have parental control software on the bedroom machines.

Other devices are two old pcs, one in my man shed and one in my garage, both turned off unless in use for Internet radio duties or playing mp3's

Phones and Ipod Touches, should imagine phones and Ipods would run flat very quickly or fill up if downloading via wifi all the time, generally they are on standby.


Our usage hasnt changes since we were with Sky on a much cheaper package (8mb for a tenner a month) and we never hit any fair usage cap.

 

If your router says 300MB and their s/w says 10GB then something somewhere is very wrong.

I think you need to ask BT how they are counting because that sounds way out to me.

I would start doing a dump fromy your router each day to show your usage.

Then put it all in a letter to BT, and address it to their CTO.

 

Yes, dont know what they are doing with the links !

"http://community.bt.com/t5/BB-in-Home/BT-Usage-monitor-skipped-a-day/td-p/61460"

Would help however if there were any sentient life forms at BT, this falls between the cracks, its not billing and it isnt technical, not technical in that the Indian chap reading from his script could be able to help with and the billing just blindly take it as read it is correct.

Someone was billed for 1TB, even though their line was not fast enough to download that in a month, especially considering they got the throttle applied anyway.

Apparenly the Usage stuff has a habit of rounding up anyway, it is really rounding up for me and a few others !

Letter is the next step.

 

YHM..

 

Todays fun was that the "upgrade" was mean tto be live by midnight last night so I was hoping to improve on the 0.2 mb/sec speed I was getting, still the same this morning, apparently you still get throttled for 30 days regrdless so, I am being throttled for going over a 40 GB limit even though I am now paying for their top service with 300 GB, I am still throttled based on 40 GB, getting 0.2 mb/sec.

So p1ssed off with BT, if anyone is choosing a service provider, I urge you not to go with BT, sure some people have a fine service but when you have an issue they are utterly hopeless.

 

Another possibility is that technically everything is correct, but your bill is being generated against another customers' usage.

 

How did you upgrade to unlimited jacko through the website or by phone? and do they tie you into a new contract?

Also I thought I would mention I have been on BT since July and have had no problems up until November when I started getting these warnings and charges. And in August I pretty much had to download every steam game that I had lost.

 

You're preaching to the converted there. Would never go back to BT in a million years. They even treat their enterprise customers as badly so you can imagine how they treat an individual user.

FTTC will come to other ISPs eventually and then maybe I'll look at it. Or Virgin. My current provider gives me 9Mbit down/1.2Mbit up. Not the fastest in the world but I know I'm never throttled and is near enough truely unlimited. So I can live with it.

 

On the phone when I rang to query the bill KOT, seemed like the only option so agreed to it but the more I look into the usage the more I realise that the usage they are telling me I have had is way out of kilter with what my router is logging and what I would expect based on what we do. Not sure about the contract, was tied in anyway, its annoying as I want the service and am happy to pay but it needs to be accurate and at least be faster.

 

I dont believe for 1 second you used 170gb of internet usage ina month....i just dont...my phone has 500MB so half a gig of free surfing, and that is plenty 500 web pages a month...look at this: this is just 1/2 a gig/ 500 meg,

Basic webpages (mainly text) 5,000
Rich webpages (with multimedia, e.g. BBC) 1,500
Basic e-mails 500,000
Rich e-mails (with attachments) 1,000
Downloading/streaming music 100 songs
Downloading/streaming video 1 hour


So in 4 weeks you used 340 times this much internet did you>>??..mate that is 340 hours of streaming movies, roughly 12hrs a day, everyday for a month...bullsh1t..

 

How do you check your router stats? - Didn't realise you could do that
How are you checking your speeds as well?

I have BT Infinity but am on the unlimited package so BT.com doesn't show any usage.

Run 2 xboxes, Laptop & ipod touch plus the occaisonal working from home.

 

It is on target for over 200 this month Spec D !

It goes up between 5 and 10 GB a day on their usage thingy, my router has logged in three days, 400 meg, in the same time the BT usage has gone up 20 GB or something like that.

Really frustrated with them now,

 

Phone them during office hours, get hold of tech department. This is a crock, something your end is either drawing permanently or they are srewing you over.....almost sounds like the decimal place is wrong!!.....I have AOl who suck....but i just use their connection nothing AOL is installed on my pc's....i get free evening and weekend calls natiowide and free unlimited 8mb broadband for £5.99 p/month plus BT line rental,.....happy days, that'll do for me...