For whose who does not use the internet by nights check yours traffic. I was very surprised when I found that I used 82 Mb for 2 days when I was away from my house on the Easter. When I called to company and asked what the hell, I got the answer that this is "my" modem. All my computers were switched off. I checked all other nights and I found that the traffic was used from 2Mb to 4Mb, one night is to 20Mb, one night is to 40Mb. After that I keep my modem is switch off at the nights. I have a WI-FI router and I thought it was hacked, but "no", 100% sure it has a very good security (WPA, strong SSID, MAC address filtering).
Bottom line is that ISP's measure traffic before it gets to your modem when it passes through their network on the way to your assigned ip address.
Bit torrent is a classic example, even after you close the program it will generate traffic to your ip address for a long time afterwards as peers are still trying to connect to you.
Other examples like a ddos event, major virus/spam outbreak or someone port scanning your ip address can accrue usage against your account too, that's life.
If you measure usage with a bandwidth monitor (like networx) on your pc's, or at your modem/router it will not always be 1:1 with the ISP's record, should be fairly similar though usually.
kudos to Vodafone on this issue at least, my usage count seem reset at 12pm exactly at the end of the monthly cycle. And have used a few GB over the allowance with no penalty the following month.
jonb: kudos to Vodafone on this issue at least, my usage count seem reset at 12pm exactly at the end of the monthly cycle. And have used a few GB over the allowance with no penalty the following month.
But if you ask TelstraClear, this is impossible! It can't be done! YOU LIE!!!!!
heavenlywild: So currently the best solution is to use your remaining monthly data at least an hour or two before midnight.
Not really, because there's no way to tell exactly how much you've used right up until "now", since it lags behind up to a few hours. If you see that you've got 1GB left, then you use 1GB, you'll probably find that a few hours later, your usage will go up more than 1GB, which would push you over the limit, costing you extra, hence the dilemma. Getting close to your limit but not going over on TelstraClear is very tricky and time consuming. It boils down to this: If you want to use all the usage you've paid for (and not have usage dumped onto a new month before it even starts), and not go over, you have to spend hours on the last day determining exactly how much data you have left, and you can't use the internet at all for at least 2 hours before midnight on the last day. Not only is this extremely hard like I say, but anyone could deliberately cost you money by sending data to you at the end of your month (since you're so close it won't take much to push you over).
I wonder if there's a law which is relevant here - although you technically can get the service they claim (ie usage of your entire data cap), it's so hard and risky, especially for computer novices, that it effectively isn't what they claim.
While I see it's frustrating that you may end up paying for data you don't use, it's a matter of a few dollars here and there, no?
It's no different to the way that Vodafone bill on account customers who have remaining minutes on their plan at the end of their billing cycle. Do you think everyone rushes around making phone calls to use up their last remaining minutes? I don't.
The only company out that that I can think of that would suit you Screeb, would be Xnet who are Pay-Per-Meg. At least then you're only arguing with them over rounding up to the nearest megabyte ;)
anatoki: While I see it's frustrating that you may end up paying for data you don't use, it's a matter of a few dollars here and there, no?
Yes, but it adds up. If you go over by 1 byte every month, then you're paying $36 a year for 12 bytes of data. Unlikely, but you get the idea. If I advertise a 50GB service, then give you only 48GB, you would be right to be angry about it. It's not as black and white as that, but it's close. It's also more about the principle of the matter. I'm not really terribly affected by a few dollars or a few wasted gigabytes, but I see it as a shrewd "nickel and diming" tactic on TelstraClear's behalf. It's disrespectful to customers and misleading. Other ISPs have shown that there's no technical reason why it is the way it is.
It's no different to the way that Vodafone bill on account customers who have remaining minutes on their plan at the end of their billing cycle. Do you think everyone rushes around making phone calls to use up their last remaining minutes? I don't.
It's not quite the same. At that point you would probably just be making calls for the sake of using up your minutes. There are many alternatives to calling someone, like email or text message (so if you've used up your minutes, you're not forced to pay for "overage", and you can use the alternatives during the month to save your minutes). With data, there is usually something worthwhile to download that you wanted to get anyway, and usually there's no reasonable or timely alternative. In other words, if you come to the end of your month and you find that you have 10 phone minutes left, the potential utility gained by using those minutes at that point is most likely far less (and most likely nil) than the utility gained by using your last gig of bandwidth.
Besides that, yes it is quite similar, but only in the sense that your unused minutes/gigabytes are taken away at the end of the month. That's not what I'm complaining about. Every ISP with a data cap does this (for plan-included data that is). What I'm complaining about is the various inaccuracies and inconsistencies of TelstraClear's data accounting system which leads to more data and/or monetary waste.
The only company out that that I can think of that would suit you Screeb, would be Xnet who are Pay-Per-Meg. At least then you're only arguing with them over rounding up to the nearest megabyte ;)
Yes, this is a good system, but since my ISP is TelstraClear not Xnet, it's not really helpful (I can't change ISP any time soon for a whole variety of exciting reasons - besides, I'm not going to change ISP for such a relatively minor thing, which I guess is why TelstraClear can get away with it). Anyway, it's not the only solution as you suggest. Other ISPs apparently don't suffer the same issues (like Vodafone as jonb mentioned). If TelstraClear's system actually used exactly 12am as the monthly switchover time, then there wouldn't be a problem. It would also be nice if the meter didn't lag behind so much and so unpredictably, but I gather that's a "feature" of most, if not all ISPs.
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