join in to audit SUSPECT Telecom broadband METERING

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › join in to audit SUSPECT Telecom broadband METERING

biash

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#36556 28-Jun-2009 12:34

This is now the third month that our hard-wired (NON-WIRELESS) home internet usage has gone far over our expected usage allowance.

As a network administrator of some 10 years plus experience I decided to install my own metering on all interfaces pointing to the home office gateway.

PLEASE JOIN IN THIS IMPORTANT PEER AUDIT.

Download NetMeter v1.1.3 and help us either confirm or deny our suspicions of CONSISTENT OVER-BILLING. I attach a link to a spreadsheet that shows massive variances both equal and above and also below those reported by Telecom for our domestic home usage.

I fear that this practice may be widespread and I would ask other Xtra users and ISP's interested in new customers to assist us in this audit as only unsatisfactory help is available from Telecom's Manila call centre.

Please comment If you also suspect you are being overcharged or if you have a better Network Meter suggestion.

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#228930 28-Jun-2009 13:43

How many devices do you have connected? Are you remembering about things like Playstation 3's... Xbox 360s... Wiis? If you are using these devices on a wireless-capable router are you sure the wireless access point is disabled?

Hmmm if the problem you are experiencing is indeed widespread, I would expect to see many more threads of this nature... yours is the first I've seen here. What makes you think it is widespread?

biash

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#228934 28-Jun-2009 13:53

...as I said in my post only hardwired devices and only 4 pc's and each with rj45 eth0 only and only pointing to gateway and all with autostart NetMeters. Thanks for the comment. Lets see what your NetMeter says shall we?

PaulBags

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#228937 28-Jun-2009 14:12

Unless you can monitor your WAN connection (If your using bittorent or other p2p networks, or for numerous other reasons, it's possible your getting traffic that is rejected by the router, but that still [rightly] counts as traffic on your account) it's not going to hold up even if you are right. Whos using the computers, anyone who might turn off/pause netmeter on you? Are you sure theres no viruses on your network? What model router, is it wireless capable, and if so is wireless disabled?

Back when I used to monitor my network traffic using netmeter (over wired) (and sorry, I don't know of any better that is free) I consistently got higher/unreliable results under XP than what was reported by windows connection status. I beleive some of this was skewed by QoL and other host to router traffic, and at the time netmeter could not limit itself to traffic outside of the LAN.

biash

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#228944 28-Jun-2009 14:27

Thanks PaulBags, we are all trying to get the most accurate figures in the house so as to avoid conflicting stats.

We do not run p2p either and when I checked the D-Link 504G all ports were opened and nothing seems to be blocked there and it is not wireless capable, i.e. default config (no filtering).

Each of the 4 PC's are running their own Firewalls. I have reset the counters on the D-Link 504g and have started watching the TX and RX stats there too just in case. Since the modem/router has no filtering enabled, do you think that the traffic could be bouncing off the local PC firewall before being registered by NetMeter?

I hope the log from the D-Link D-504G will not show up NetMeters fallibility. I will post again if I find this to be at variance with NetMeter.

Perhaps I will also run a p2p test to see if excess trafic is generated. Anyone care to suggest a good legal p2p torrent to test with. I have heard that some mainstream software is distributed via p2p.

freitasm

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#228952 28-Jun-2009 14:54

biash: Anyone care to suggest a good legal p2p torrent to test with. I have heard that some mainstream software is distributed via p2p.

Any P2P torrent software is legal. The content you are accessing may be illegally distributed, but don't blame the software...

Ragnor

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#228961 28-Jun-2009 15:49

Here's another good free network monitor you might want to run on your machines and compare against the netmeter, router and ISP logs.

http://www.softperfect.com/products/networx/

I agree with the people saying the router is really the best place for the logging to occur and it catches everything and exludes lan traffic hopefully. I suspect the Dlink won't be very robust in the logging department though.

biash

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#228971 28-Jun-2009 16:39

I thought that my post was severely testing some readers Sunday afternoon comprehension abilities but perhaps I am mistaken.

My thanks to the kind gentleman for pointing out the poor formatting in the original post and somehow managing to make it more legible.

Equinox IT

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freitasm

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#228972 28-Jun-2009 16:46

biash: I see that this post is severely testing some readers Sunday afternoon comprehension abilities. Please try to read again.

Please explain why you think so. So far I've read some good comments - if anything is difficult to read is the first post, which is a single paragraph with six sentences - no line break, which I am now adding.

PaulBags

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#228981 28-Jun-2009 17:55

do you think that the traffic could be bouncing off the local PC firewall before being registered by NetMeter?

Thats possible, however as far as erronious external connections go almost all will be dropped by the router because of NAT, unless one of your machines is set up as a DMZ. But they are still forewarded towards you by your ISP so they still count towards your useage. Usually the amount of random unintiated connections would be negligable.

Another possibility is that your network is dropping alot of legitimate packets for some reason, resulting in packets being resent. I'm assuming they would have to be incoming packets dropped at the router, otherwise they should show up on netmeter. (ADSL, yes?) This could be caused by poor line filters, a bad phone line, or even be telecoms fault or something faulty in the exchange - althrough I doubt the last one.

Another possibility is simply that data can be transmitted in some compressed state within the LAN, while over the WAN it's not as compressed. I know one of the HTTP standards allows for compression. It's been awhile since I looked at any of the standards and protocols, this may actually make no sense, but i'm just throwing it out there.

hellonearthisman

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#229011 28-Jun-2009 20:06

You could be loosing to data a DoS attack, like this Slingshot user got.

I don't think your monitoring would pick that up.

steve98

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#229105 29-Jun-2009 09:25

biash: ...as I said in my post only hardwired devices and only 4 pc's and each with rj45 eth0 only and only pointing to gateway and all with autostart NetMeters. Thanks for the comment. Lets see what your NetMeter says shall we?

Yup I know you said you were only using hardwired devices but as per my post, if your router is wireless capable have you made sure the wireless access point on it is disabled? If not, you could have other devices, perhaps belonging to your neighbours, connecting to it and using the internet.

biash

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#229109 29-Jun-2009 09:30

any geek will tell you a D-504G is not a wireless device

steve98

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#229115 29-Jun-2009 09:37

You gotta love people who turn to others for help and then turn around and insult them when they don't go "ZOMG YOU'RE RIGHT! CONSPIRACY!

freitasm

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#229116 29-Jun-2009 09:39

That's why he's banned. He posted another discussion and when people pointed out he was "wrong" he got all up and started being anti-social.

We don't have time, space, bandwidth for nutjobs.

PaulBags

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#229123 29-Jun-2009 10:13

I was kinda wondering why I (dropped out of CCNA near the end of semester 3) was explaining basic networking principals to "a network administrator of some 10 years plus experience".

Do you have bandwidth enough for ridicule of nutjobs?

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