Going through a lot of data, whats wrong ?

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Going through a lot of data, whats wrong ?

1 | 2 | 3 | 4

3puttssuck

745 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 54

#313225 30-Mar-2010 22:42

Charles000: Not sure if it has been covered, but if you have teenage children, then start there...I know I used to drive my parents crazy with blowing caps (first dial-up hours, then the 5GB jetstart international cap), and pleaded ignorance the whole time...

LOL, my 4 yr old is good on the PC but not that good.

3puttssuck

745 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 54

#313227 30-Mar-2010 22:44

Talkiet:
mm1352000: Well that data isn't exactly uniform is it? Download is relatively high on some days but the upload ratio still seems obviously out of the ordinary. The most obvious explanations for high upload bandwidth usage have already been mentioned earlier. If you're certain that nobody that uses your computers is using the data, that you haven't got virus/spyware problems, and that nobody is stealing your internet via wireless then I've only got one more idea. There is an outside chance that someone else is using your ISP account. It is a long shot, but worth a check. I can do this with my ISP (Maxnet) by logging in to my account and checking "who is online". There should only be one user...

If nobody else is using the ISP account then one of the assumptions (nobody using the bandwidth, virus/spyware, wireless leech etc.) is likely to be wrong. The only way to find out what is going on is to monitor each computer on your network until you find the culprit, then disconnect it until you can find the cause.

Good luck!

The way data is counted is tied to your line, not your login... In fact it's possible to authenticate with a generic username password combo so you don't even need to have your username in the router.

I noticed you posted some daily usage figures earlier... Is one of the calendar days a day during which the router was turned off for all 24 hours?

Cheers - Neil G

Yes, turn off on the 27th & 29th. I used a 3G vodem on those days.

3puttssuck

745 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 54

#313229 30-Mar-2010 22:45

freitasm: Actually, have you turned the router off 24 hours as requested days ago?

Yes 27th & 29th.

freitasm

BDFL - Memuneh
80652 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 41045

Administrator

ID Verified

Trusted

Geekzone

Lifetime subscriber

#313230 30-Mar-2010 22:46

If you really have a problem sending out spam then your uploads would have to be a lot bigger than your downloads. Also the spam wouldn't come out of Outlook, but probably from a trojan or your PC would be part of a botnet - which goes back to the previous suggestion that you have to make sure none of your PCs are infected.

Referral links: Quic Broadband (free setup code: R587125ERQ6VE) | Samsung | AliExpress | Wise | Sharesies

Support Geekzone by subscribing (browse ads-free), or making a one-off or recurring donation through PressPatron.

Talkiet

4819 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 3934

Trusted

#313240 30-Mar-2010 23:05

slliwgd: Yes, turn off on the 27th & 29th. I used a 3G vodem on those days.

29 Mar 2010
in 24.12
out 23.91
total 48.03

27 Mar 2010
in 7.89
out 3.91
total 11.80

(I assumed in and out - perhaps it's out and in - doesn't matter - they add up)

I note that the figures for the 27th and 29th are way down on on the other days, so even if we took the larger of the days at a total of ~50MB, then a month would be about 1.5GB... Now certainly if the router was powered off for the entire 24 hour period, traffic shouldn't be that high - but it would not be anywhere near the level of using 16Gig in about three weeks.

Could I confirm if you unplugged everything from the router and disabled wireless, or if you actually had the router powered off for the 2 days in question? There are ways to accrue traffic even if no PCs are plugged into the router.

If for example, someone has been pinging your address, that traffic counts.

If your router is actually OFF or disconnected from the ADSL, the upstream traffic should be zero. There is a case where a small amount of traffic MAY be counted as downloads even if the router is off, but it is rare and normally only occurs if someone has been attacking you, or for a short period after using P2P software if you suddenly turn off the router.

Since the traffic levels reduced massively on the 2 days you didn't use the ADSL for your PCs, I would have to suggest it's pretty likely there is something on one of your PCs that is chewing up the data...

You could try installing this (http://www.metal-machine.de/readerror/ ) on each PC and it will keep a record of the amount of traffic that goes over the ethernet port each day as well as give you a live graph of the ethernet port use... Bear in mind that it will also catch local LAN traffic if you share files between PCs - but it's a good place to look next)

Depending on how brave you are, you could also try this ( http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/sysinternals/bb897437.aspx ) which will show in realtime every connection to the Internet... Now I warn you, even the most idle PC will probably scare you with the number and frequency of connections, but it might show up something.

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

3puttssuck

745 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 54

#314142 2-Apr-2010 12:37

I think I have got to the bottom of it. I installed Networx several days ago on all 3 pc's and last night between 10pm & 8am this morning 1 of the pc's DL 186 MB & UL 189 MB. Both other pc's were next to nothing.
So said pc must be infected with a Trojen or be part of a Botnet some how. All scans I have run show nothing, so its outside of my tech knowledge and will have a repair shop look at it for me. Thanks to everbody how offered advise. Much appreciated.

HP

Shop now for HP laptops and other devices (affiliate link).

wazzageek

1095 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 108

ID Verified

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#314146 2-Apr-2010 12:47

slliwgd: I think I have got to the bottom of it. I installed Networx several days ago on all 3 pc's and last night between 10pm & 8am this morning 1 of the pc's DL 186 MB & UL 189 MB. Both other pc's were next to nothing.
So said pc must be infected with a Trojen or be part of a Botnet some how. All scans I have run show nothing, so its outside of my tech knowledge and will have a repair shop look at it for me. Thanks to everbody how offered advise. Much appreciated.

Good work finding the source of the data usage - it'll be interesting to hear back what was causing it.

Ragnor

8279 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 585

Trusted

#314322 3-Apr-2010 00:14

Good to hear you at least found the machine causing the problem.

Networx is great for this sort of thing.

Charles000

78 posts

Master Geek

#314383 3-Apr-2010 13:57

slliwgd: I think I have got to the bottom of it. I installed Networx several days ago on all 3 pc's and last night between 10pm & 8am this morning 1 of the pc's DL 186 MB & UL 189 MB. Both other pc's were next to nothing.
So said pc must be infected with a Trojen or be part of a Botnet some how. All scans I have run show nothing, so its outside of my tech knowledge and will have a repair shop look at it for me. Thanks to everbody how offered advise. Much appreciated.

Good work, seems like you fixed it. Let us know what they say the problem is. My advise would be to run something like microsoft security essentials on all your PCs - I've found this to be better than the free version of Ad-Aware. If I recall correctly, the free version of Ad-Aware is only antimalware, and only the paid version comes with an antivirus.

3puttssuck

745 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 54

#316797 10-Apr-2010 14:43

I haven't had a chance to take PC into shop as yet but I think I have found the problem myself by pure luck. I have a Hotmail account that I use maybe once or twice a year. I needed to log in to find a contacts email address and whoa !!! hundreds of emails in the sent items folder everyday. Filled with spam. Now just need to work out how to delete this unused Hotmail account for good and goodbye problems. I hope.

johnr

19282 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 2526
Inactive user

#316818 10-Apr-2010 15:56

Have you tried running malarebytes and doing a scan??

www.malwarebytes.org

Geekzone

Want to support Geekzone and browse the site without the ads? Subscribe to Geekzone now (monthly, annual and lifetime options).

JMatt94

225 posts

Master Geek

#316824 10-Apr-2010 16:03

Exact same thing is happening to me!?

Something is wrong with my internet, how can upload usage be so high, I don't upload, Ever.

Upload: 3901MB

Download: 3086MB

My internet just renewed too, this is 5 days of usage..I am on a 10GB Plan.

This is ridiculous!

freitasm

BDFL - Memuneh
80652 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 41045

Administrator

ID Verified

Trusted

Geekzone

Lifetime subscriber

#316825 10-Apr-2010 16:05

If this is really the problem, closing the account wouldn't solve it at all. For example if you gave your hotmail account name and pasword away then those emails could well be sent from anywhere else, not your PC.

On the other hand, if your PC is infected with a trojan and using something like Outlook Express to connect to that account to send email then closing the account wouldn't stop the attemps - using data would continue anyway.

YOU HAVE TO CLEAN UP YOUR PC NOT YOUR WEB BASED EMAIL ACCOUNT.

Referral links: Quic Broadband (free setup code: R587125ERQ6VE) | Samsung | AliExpress | Wise | Sharesies

Support Geekzone by subscribing (browse ads-free), or making a one-off or recurring donation through PressPatron.

wazzageek

1095 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 108

ID Verified

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#316835 10-Apr-2010 16:42

slliwgd: I haven't had a chance to take PC into shop as yet but I think I have found the problem myself by pure luck. I have a Hotmail account that I use maybe once or twice a year. I needed to log in to find a contacts email address and whoa !!! hundreds of emails in the sent items folder everyday. Filled with spam. Now just need to work out how to delete this unused Hotmail account for good and goodbye problems. I hope.

Are you sure that the send items are being sent from that particular PC?

I'd be tempted to just re-install the OS (blanking the hard drive whilst in the process) if you haven't got any important documents on there.

(If there is something on there that hasn't been caught by virus / mal-ware scanners by now, then i would suggest your machine is very, very heavily infected)

zonky

62 posts

Master Geek

#318415 14-Apr-2010 16:25

The only way to 'fix' a comprised machine is with a clean install from trusted read-only media.

Anything else is wasting your time.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4