The mysterious case of the disappearing data

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stuartbradbury

18 posts

Geek

#114954 8-Mar-2013 11:47

Hi
How can I find out where (by site or whatever) my data disappears to?
We've started blowing our data cap and can't work out why or where it's going. We've been satisfied with 20GB for ages but started blowing that too soon and too frequently so cranked to 50. Two weeks into the month and we've blown 75% of that already.
Spoken to the ISP (Slingshot) who can tell us WHEN it's being used but not WHERE. They sent us a table of usage by the hour and we found gigs consumed when we're sure we weren't even in the house and gear likely turned off.
Starting to get nervous of maliciousness ... I've changed the WiFi password and blown away & re-installed from scratch 2 of the 5 PCs - others in the queue. That hasn't seemed to make any difference so far.
Our inventory is:

Desktop PC (Win7 Ult)
4 x laptops (Win7 Ult)
2 x iPads
3 x iPhones

OK - there's a bit going on here, but that inventory hasn't changed recently but data usage has - dramatically!

If the ISP can't, is there some way we can find out WHERE big lumps of data are going ourselves? Somewhere in the modem or Router? Or, perhaps better, some app that can log this stuff in a vaguely user-friendly way?
Any clues or suggestions out there?

freitasm

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Geekzone

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#776785 8-Mar-2013 11:54

What new programs have you installed the last six months? Anyone else started using a computer in the last few months (kids getting to learn to use it, etc)? Started using movie sites such as Hulu, Netflix, Apple iTunes? Started using music sites such as Pandora, Rdio? New video games? Game updates failing?

The list can go on and on...

Talkiet

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#776789 8-Mar-2013 11:57

Can Slingshot tell you if the data was upload or download data? There's a chance someone is ending you a ton of unsolicited traffic that will be dropped by your router, but only after Slingshot has counted it as traffic.

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.

NonprayingMantis

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#776802 8-Mar-2013 12:10

a big one that can often happen without you realising it is iCloud/photostream.

I had a friend who went on holiday and as soon as he arrived back in the country and his mac hit his home wifi, it started uploading GBs of data from all the photos he took all day every day for a couple of weeks. Took us ages to work out that this was the culprit as it was happening even when he was out of the house and the upload wasn?t noticeable before because it only happened a few photos at a time, but with the holiday all of a sudden you get thousands of pics all uploading at once.

Moreover, it was uploading them over his homw wifi to the cloud AND all his apple devices were ALSO downloding them at the same time. With a mac, 2 iphones, an ipad, and an apple TV each photo was effectively counted 5 times, once for the upload from the mac, and 4 times for the downloading to 4 separate devices. ouch!

stuartbradbury

18 posts

Geek

#776820 8-Mar-2013 12:33

Wow - you guys are awesome!!

@frietasm - Cheers ... righto, another chat with the family sounds in order :)

@Talkiet - Yes they can. Please have a gander at the PDF of that report which I've popped up to Mega here -
https://mega.co.nz/#!YctEia4R!PV4ATQoSRd4-Nq6bUGOvHBnH44hhnXY9UlyE3VZTl5c
Notice too that in EVERY session the data Sent >= Received. That seems a bit sus to me???

@NonprayingMantis - I think you are def onto something. All iDevices have Photostream going on and 3 PCs have DropBox fully sync'd too. Now I feel like a jerk! That would seem to be a very likely (and obvious) sucker.
[And Dropbox was having an issue recently where it self-replicated inside itself - Dropbox in Dropbox iteratively until it filled up (happily max is < 10GB) for a few days]

@ALL - I've found this thread with similar issue -
http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=39&topicid=59152
so will also try the 'router off for a day' experiment

Cheers all.

Talkiet

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#776827 8-Mar-2013 12:46

Yeah - those traffic levels and patterns look 'real' to me... the sent and recieved being the same is just a bad presentation of the data...I imagine those 4 interfaces are in/out and in/out from 2 interfaces on the ISP network which explains why they are all almost identical.

Time of day is also variable so yeah, I'd be taking a close look at your network. You could also try disabling just the wireless on your router at night, and that way you might tell if it's a wired or wireless device causing the traffic.

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.

stuartbradbury

18 posts

Geek

#776904 8-Mar-2013 13:45

Thanks for that! :)

@Talkiet - sorry to be a bit thick, but could I ask you to be a tad more explicit about 'taking a close look at your network' please?
The rest of it I get OK.
Many thanx
s

Talkiet

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#776906 8-Mar-2013 13:47

Oh, it means very genericly that you should look at the traffic sources and consumers within your own LAN (wired and wifi)... I don't expect this has anything to do with your actual network.

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.

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stuartbradbury

18 posts

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#776907 8-Mar-2013 13:49

OK - got it. Cheers muchly!!
s

nickb800

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#776935 8-Mar-2013 14:20

Do you have Spotify on any computers? It uploads content in the background by default, sometimes a significant volume

stuartbradbury

18 posts

Geek

#776945 8-Mar-2013 14:35

Ya NA! lol

That's one of the reasons I uninstalled within a week of installing it. Too intrusive and pervasive for me.
Thanks all the same!
s

stuartbradbury

18 posts

Geek

#846515 28-Jun-2013 06:27

Found it ... seems to me to be MS Outlook's implementation of IMAP for email delivery. I've replaced Outlook with Eudora OSE (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Eudora_OSE) - still using IMAP - and my usage has dropped dramatically. Outlook 2010's IMAP was clunky, slow and unreliable; 2013 improves performance and stability but both seem very bandwidth-hungry. Eudora OSE is fast, reliable and efficient with bandwidth. And highly configurable and customisable. UI is perhaps a tad old-school but acceptable and intuitive.
I'd be interested to know if anyone has comments or stats on MS Outlook's IMAP implementation, especially re data/bandwith usage?