Where is my bandwidth going? (Comcast related)

ED!

Is there any program or means of determining exactly what compromises your data usage. Comcast seems to believe that - between watching 4 episodes of Battlestar Galactica and a few games of Warframe that I managed to use 30G's of data yesterday. It's entirely possible that Amazon Instant Video is dredging up all of that traffic, but I'd like to know for sure.

Gaslight

This is probably a dumb question but it has to be asked: is your network secured? Are you sure this isn't because of a neighbor downloading 30 gigs of porn on your open wifi network?

ED!

It's secured in the sense that I have a password on it. I have the NETGEAR admin page up and I'm not showing that I have any other devices connected beyond the ones I expect.

Here is a photo of router info - not sure how reliable this is as a measure of usage. I'm guessing TxPkts/RxPkts is total bytes transferred and received?

Malgaras

TxPkts/RxPkts is packets transmitted and packets received. Packet size is variable and is not a good indicator. In general packets will be between a few hundred and a couple thousand bytes a piece, so guessing data transferred from that will be useless.

If you are looking to see if someone is using your wifi, that chart isn't going to tell you anything in that regard as it lumps all your WLAN traffic together. You would need a list of connected hosts (both present and historical) for that.

For 3 hours of HD video streaming, and game playing, 30GB does not sound THAT unreasonable. Edit: Actually, it is pretty high. I fail at math. Is this an issue for some reason? I can't imagine Comcast is hounding you for using 30GBof data.

Caelum Militis

Malgaras wrote: »

For 3 hours of HD video streaming, 30GB does not sound at all unreasonable. Is this an issue for some reason? I can't imagine Comcast is hounding you for using 30gb of data.

30GB for 3 hours of HD video streaming is pretty unreasonable. HD video averages 1-3GB/hour depending on actual quality. So even on the high side, that should only have been ~9GB in video that day, plus a little more for the games played, etc.

Depending on where he lives, Comcast may be getting on his case due to data caps. Those aren't in all markets, but some areas are limited to 300GB/month.

Malgaras

Caelum Militis wrote: »

Malgaras wrote: »

For 3 hours of HD video streaming, 30GB does not sound at all unreasonable. Is this an issue for some reason? I can't imagine Comcast is hounding you for using 30gb of data.

30GB for 3 hours of HD video streaming is pretty unreasonable. HD video averages 1-3GB/hour depending on actual quality. So even on the high side, that should only have been ~9GB in video that day, plus a little more for the games played, etc.

Depending on where he lives, Comcast may be getting on his case due to data caps. Those aren't in all markets, but some areas are limited to 300GB/month.

Yeah, my bad. I realized I did some pretty terrible multiplication earlier. Oops.

ED!

Yes, this is in Atlanta with data caps. I reached 300GB for leaving a torrent open on a machine that never shuts off. However, I've ceased all of that and somehow still am managing with nothing more than video streaming and PS4 play pulling down nearly 100GB's after reaching the limit.

As for packet size, if I assume what 1mb per packet - that's still like 260GB's?

Right now I just want something that can tell me to the letter exactly what I am using and from where because I'm not really interested in getting in a fight with the only internet provider in town (AT&T is spotty - almost block by block in terms of availability).

tinwhiskers

I guess my first instinct would be to look at your PS4 and perhaps Steam if you have it on a computer and see what it may have been updating for you. Multi-gig patches are more the norm than the exception at this point. I've had DOTA 2 pull down 5 gigs in one night and that thing is basically a prettied up Warcraft 3 map.

Bloodycow

PS4 patches are huge! What games are you playing on there?

ED!

Bloodycow wrote: »

PS4 patches are huge! What games are you playing on there?

Erm. All of them? I have about 6 disc and most all digital. I hadn't thought about the auto-updates.

Dhalphir

I use a program called NetLimiter for my bandwidth monitoring. For me it's necessary because I have fuckall bandwidth and an internet speed that varies hugely depending on time of day, so it's important for me to be able to figure out what my bandwidth is doing at a moment's notice by clicking on the tray icon. You can also set limits and thing like that, but I usually don't mess with that.

It only monitors programs running on the computer it's installed on, and I don't think it provides a history, but if you're trying to figure out whether it's your computer consuming the bandwidth or not, this is a good place to start to rule out massive background downloads or something like that.