I had a similar situation with a provider about a year back. They swore black and blue I was doing traffic I wasn't (I did turn off my gear for a week while away on holiday but still I seemed to be using internet)
Two months of back and forward, I then gave up and switched to someone else.
nate: I then gave up and switched to someone else.
I've been noteing with interest the number of usage comments and problems in GZ at late. Seems a number of providers are having issues.
I'm starting to wonder if it needs some regulatory investigation.
It seems to me that it shouldn't be a case of having to move providers.
Would you accept this when you fill your car with petrol or buy a kilo of meat at the butcher?
Other industries are required to have their measuring equipment up to standard. It seems that in the ISP space you can just do what ever you like and make what ever claims you like.
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jnawk: May I suggest turning on SNMP on all the machines, and spinning up a MRTG virtual machine - if you collect realtime traffic graphs, that might give you something to take back to TC.
What snmp counters are you thinking of looking at?
You'd end up counting all the internal network traffic as well?
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Athlonite: Yes well seeing as there's a complaint laid then it bloody well should be but ISP's are lazy bunch doing only what needs to be done and nothing more it seems
I get the impression you don't follow just how complex and expensive counting traffic is.
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Athlonite: Yes well seeing as there's a complaint laid then it bloody well should be but ISP's are lazy bunch doing only what needs to be done and nothing more it seems
I get the impression you don't follow just how complex and expensive counting traffic is.
Then ISPs need man up and do it properly or stop doing it..
graemeh: It's harder than you would think, typically traffic information is recorded from one of the routers in the network. Companies that design routers think shifting packets (i.e. keeping your internet connection going) is more important than making accounting records. If traffic is heavy the router will not have time to put out accounting records so when they do come out it will be covering a longer period than normal.
The traffic volume information is not normally lost but it can build up.
I would prefer that all internet plans had unlimited usage and then the whole usage accounting infrastructure would not be needed, unfortunately though most networks have some serious bottlenecks so they need some way of getting people to share nicely.
Telstra just did a whole billing platform upgrade that was meant to fix this problem. The counters are meant to update to the radius server every 20 minutes now.
However the link between the ERX and the collector can go off line and this can go unnoticed for days.
I'm wondering if there's a bit of a game going on with a hacker? Take the billing system off line for a period and then whack the end points to drive up peoples accounts.
I've got 2 days of no traffic followed by 10 times my average daily usage when the fault was eventually noticed.
As I understand it, the billing system just collects the ERX port bit octet counters, but they also have netflow collectors as well to manage network load, but the two aren't linked. So they don't look at port level netflow to see unusual spikes.
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kyhwana2: Then ISPs need man up and do it properly or stop doing it..
That call really needs to come from the regulatory body so that the requirement is impossed equally on the whole industry.
For that to happen, users need to contact the regulatory body and ask for action.
Fuel pumps need regular testing, scales for sale of things need testing and certing, yet ISPs are alowed to build stuff that breaks all the time when they are selling something that really should be a hell of a lot easier to measure and account for since its already on a computer, and they get away with denying there is any problems, putting up incorrect details and catching up later all while having zero oversight of their practaces or even disclosing how they measure it.
jnawk: May I suggest turning on SNMP on all the machines, and spinning up a MRTG virtual machine - if you collect realtime traffic graphs, that might give you something to take back to TC.
What snmp counters are you thinking of looking at?
You'd end up counting all the internal network traffic as well?
Overlooked that. :-( For me, my router is a PC, so one of my interfaces is to the world, and easily counted. But OP will have the same problems with other software too. Some routers (the not so dirt cheap ones) will let you SNMP them. Depends on OP's setup.
kyhwana2: Then ISPs need man up and do it properly or stop doing it..
That call really needs to come from the regulatory body so that the requirement is impossed equally on the whole industry.
For that to happen, users need to contact the regulatory body and ask for action.
Fuel pumps need regular testing, scales for sale of things need testing and certing, yet ISPs are alowed to build stuff that breaks all the time when they are selling something that really should be a hell of a lot easier to measure and account for since its already on a computer, and they get away with denying there is any problems, putting up incorrect details and catching up later all while having zero oversight of their practaces or even disclosing how they measure it.
So yes, it needs regulation.
Yes and you can still get charged for the wrong pump when you go into the shop to pay for your petrol, the checkout operator can ring your potatoes up as passionfruit and you get charged wrongly there too.
It's not the meter on the router that is the problem, it's all the other steps that happen before you are billed that tend to go wrong. Testing and certifying the router to ensure traffic is measured correctly isn't going to solve any of the usage metering problems. It will, however, cause your internet bill to become more expensive each month.
graemeh: It will, however, cause your internet bill to become more expensive each month.
My account is already bigger because of this problem. I was charged for 3 additional units last month when I should have been under by 2.
Was this because of delayed usage coming through to the billing system? If that's affecting your bill then if you haven't already you need to complain.
I was saying the bill would be higher because of the extra cost of certification.
I stand corrected. Of course, does OP want to spend $85 to save $15? I guess that depends on whether or not TC continues to stuff up his bill and by how much.
graemeh: It will, however, cause your internet bill to become more expensive each month.
My account is already bigger because of this problem. I was charged for 3 additional units last month when I should have been under by 2.
Was this because of delayed usage coming through to the billing system? If that's affecting your bill then if you haven't already you need to complain.
I was saying the bill would be higher because of the extra cost of certification.
I did complain. I was sent the standard form letter email.
Then I contacted someone in the NOC and discovered the real issues...
Then I contacted customer service and was told I'd get a credit...
Then the next bill came in - guess what, no credit...
Then I called back - wasting more time, go though the whole story again...
Promised credit again. Not holding my breath. I just paid the additional usage.
I've since installed user manager on my mikrotik and am in the process or setting up some scripts to grab the ip accounting so I can monitor the usage. I've already got a netflow collector running, but it crashed and I haven't got back to it.
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