Explosive data usage overnight

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kingjj

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#108587 2-Sep-2012 10:11

Morning GZ,

It's another one of those 'help my data usage could support a small nation' threads.

Woke up this morning to find three emails from telecom with 80%, 100% and 120% usage alerts. Between the hours of 2030 last night and 0830 this morning TUC shows usage of over 50gigs, taking our 40gig allowance over to 65 gigs usage and counting.

Now understandably this got me out of bed in a hurry, after checking the telecom website to confirm in my panic I switched off the modem, which I've now realized means I can't check which devices were connected to the modem/router overnight. I've done a scan with Microsoft Security Essentials and malwarebytes both negative. Checking running processes shows only one or two things I don't recognize which I will be googling shortly, otherwise everything normal. The GOG.com updater was running, all games were updated last night though. Nil bit torrent/file sharing software was active. Logmein is installed but disabled at present. System Updates are set manual.

Chrome was open with a couple of dozen tabs (mostly wedding research). There was a video website open but nil active streams (although several annoying popups of the dating/casino type were open). Other sites were along the eBay, pcgamer, and IMDB ilk. Wedding based websites were hotels and dresses etc.

We have a TiVo which sits there Unwatched most of the time, connected via wifi (which should be zero rated still?). And an iPhone and printer connected to wifi. Theres the one laptop as above, Otherwise no other devices that would connect.

Any other thoughts on what to check? I'll be doing a hijack this check shortly on processes and memory, and than running full scans with MSE and MWB. After that the next step would be installing a network monitor and watching traffic closely. As we are already paying for 25gigs plus overage I'd like to make this the last option if all else fails.

Our computer is regularly scanned and locked down with all updates applied. Wifi is WPA2/WPA-PSK mixed with reasonably strong password.

Any thoughts would be gladly accepted!

Cheers,

JJ

Ps: ignore any typos or auto corrects above, using iPhone which has a healthy distaste for proper English.

kingjj

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#680310 2-Sep-2012 10:37

Update: after turning adsl back on and checking software that is open and was open overnight, I believe the culprit to be the GOG.com Downloader. As soon as it opens it starts downloading at linespeed, as soon as its closed the network monitor goes back to normal background usage.

I thought it might be related to a game update stuck in a loop verifying and re-downloading when it decides its corrupt, but even with that removed from the list it still max's out the connection (download and upload).

All the money I've saved on GOG sales has now been gobbled up by $50 overage charges :-) Yippie.

Bugger.

nedkelly

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#680314 2-Sep-2012 10:45

If you are running Windows 7 you can open task manager and then select Resource Monitor and expand network and it will show you a live view of what is using your network adapter.

kingjj

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#680347 2-Sep-2012 11:14

nedkelly: If you are running Windows 7 you can open task manager and then select Resource Monitor and expand network and it will show you a live view of what is using your network adapter.

Thanks for that. I have tracked the issue to a piece of software provided by GOG.com which downloads games purchased through their service and keeps them updated. An update for a game's sound track file (Settlers 2 Gold Edition) was getting stuck in a verification failure loop, causing the 32 meg file to be constantly downloaded (after failing verification, the downloader software would delete old file, re-download and try to verify than repeat).

I've reported the issue to GOG.com but I'm not expecting much to happen.

Will have to wear the overage charges on the chin and be more careful with closing programs like this overnight.

ubergeeknz

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#680396 2-Sep-2012 14:34

kingjj:
nedkelly: If you are running Windows 7 you can open task manager and then select Resource Monitor and expand network and it will show you a live view of what is using your network adapter.

Thanks for that. I have tracked the issue to a piece of software provided by GOG.com which downloads games purchased through their service and keeps them updated. An update for a game's sound track file (Settlers 2 Gold Edition) was getting stuck in a verification failure loop, causing the 32 meg file to be constantly downloaded (after failing verification, the downloader software would delete old file, re-download and try to verify than repeat).

I've reported the issue to GOG.com but I'm not expecting much to happen.

Will have to wear the overage charges on the chin and be more careful with closing programs like this overnight.

That's really bad news... and poor design. Not only is it hammering your bandwidth but potentially their servers! Maybe one retry is understandable without prompting, but really, how often is a failed download these days due to recoverable line errors?

kiwigeek1

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#680401 2-Sep-2012 14:47

lol doesnt take much to use 50gb does it.. and just think the standard gbs allowed used to be
like 20 and 40gb per month

I still feel over night downloading should be much much cheaper or data added on plans
as its off peak and most ar ein bed and ideal for big downloads to happen
after midnight.. it would also mean people would schedule stuff for over night
and take more strain of telecom etc during the day

I use a tool running on pcs called bmextreme.. can see if data is being use
in a simple display and counts it per machine
maybe look into it lp23.com

Cymro

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#681221 4-Sep-2012 10:54

kingjj: /snip
Will have to wear the overage charges on the chin and be more careful with closing programs like this overnight.

Give Telecom a call and explain what happened to them, from what I've heard they are quite reasonable and will waive the overage charge (also you can change plan during the month which will re-set your data cap and avoid incurring more Overage).

kingjj

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#681326 4-Sep-2012 14:07

Cymro:
kingjj: /snip
Will have to wear the overage charges on the chin and be more careful with closing programs like this overnight.

Give Telecom a call and explain what happened to them, from what I've heard they are quite reasonable and will waive the overage charge (also you can change plan during the month which will re-set your data cap and avoid incurring more Overage).

I had considered doing that but I'm not one for asking for something for nothing... might give it a try though! Have already changed plans so won't be penny pinching data for the rest of the month.

Also heard back from GOG.com:

Hello,

Thank you for your suggestion. I will forward your message to our downloader creators team for review.

Regards

JuriJ
GOG.com Support

About what I expected

Equinox IT

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antoniosk

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#681332 4-Sep-2012 14:22

If it's any consolation, I had a similar experience with Apple Photostream a few months ago.

There were 5 devices the photo's were coming to, and somewhere a database got out of sync, prompting to the cloud to continously update all devices while it tried to resyncronise.

It gobbled 25GB of data before it started triggering the TelstraClear usage alarms, which then set me off to investigate and repair. Apparently not an unusual problem if you google Photostream and massive usage.

Of course, I wouldn't have known there was a problem if the usage meter had not triggered - if I was on an unlimited plan, it would probably still be merrily syncing away to this data, no doubt have clogged the pipes with an additional 5TB of useless data....

Yeah Apple!

________

Antoniosk

linw

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#681614 5-Sep-2012 09:22

nedkelly: If you are running Windows 7 you can open task manager and then select Resource Monitor and expand network and it will show you a live view of what is using your network adapter.

(Task Mgr/Performance then, bottom of window, Resource Monitor).

Thanks heaps for that reference, ned. Can't say I have seen that Resource Monitor button before. Superb troubleshooting resource.

Cheers.