Insane Data Usage

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ActiveMatrix

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Master Geek

Topic # 96577 31-Jan-2012 14:07

Hi Guys,

I work for an IT Provider and one of my clients has recieved changed their phones to an iPhone 4, 8GB handset. Since they have had this we've had one bill of 980 dollars and the latest which is only 6 days into their billing cycle which is so far up to 1100 dollars!

We have just had a call from our Gen-i account manager to tell us about the bill which was great. We've terminated mobile data on the phone and Gen-i have kindly run a report on the mobile to report back on the top websites used and the top protocols used (Actually I didnt know they collected this data which is interesting).

But the most interesting is that in only 6 days the phone has chewed through 2.6GB of data to our Exchange 2010 server! - Bad news given he's on a 150MB data plan!

Has anyone else come accross this before and have a solution? - We have 200 phones in the business which all synchronise to this Exchange server or another one, probably half the phones in the business are iPhones and we've never had this issue before!

Any comments are welcomed.

Cheers!

1 | 2

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Reply # 575337 31-Jan-2012 14:30

Perhaps the user had changed the setting with Exchange to sync their mailbox with no limit instead of the standard 3 days??

billgates

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Reply # 575339 31-Jan-2012 14:35

CYaBro: Perhaps the user had changed the setting with Exchange to sync their mailbox with no limit instead of the standard 3 days??

This. Specially if they have been with the company forever and have tonnes of emails in their mailbox.

Do whatever you want to do man.

ActiveMatrix

88 posts

Master Geek

Reply # 575343 31-Jan-2012 14:40

Hi Guys,

We operate a 1GB mailbox limit for this office, so his entire mailbox isn't able to be more than 1GB.

The iPhone will also only pull e-mails and not the attachments (this isn't configurable) when used automatically so I'm afraid that can't be the issue in this case.

I appreciate the thoughts though. I'm still extreamily puzzled.....

xpd

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Reply # 575352 31-Jan-2012 14:50

Does the user have kids ? :)

Is the user IT savvy enough to know that watching YouTube/streaming all day is costly ?

XPD / Gavin / DemiseNZ

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ActiveMatrix

88 posts

Master Geek

Reply # 575365 31-Jan-2012 15:15

xpd: Does the user have kids ? :)

Is the user IT savvy enough to know that watching YouTube/streaming all day is costly ?

I've had a IP usage report run by Gen-i and this has comfirmed our Exchange Servers front end server as the destination for over 99% of the traffic and on port 443 so there is no doubt at all what the traffic is.

I did prior to requesting the report ask all the usual questions which revealed either no truth or the usual usage of the phone. I'm pleased to see the truth was indeed told! LOL

Cheers,
Jay

nakedmolerat

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Reply # 575367 31-Jan-2012 15:16

xpd: Does the user have kids ? :)

Is the user IT savvy enough to know that watching YouTube/streaming all day is costly ?

i thought most data used came from the exchange server? (as reported by telecom)

edit: ActiveMatrix - you beat me by 1 min

CYaBro

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Reply # 575376 31-Jan-2012 15:28

Have you checked to see if there are any sync errors with the phone?
If it is having trouble syncing an email or contact or calendar item then it could be retrying all the time and this would use up data over time.

rhysb

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Reply # 575402 31-Jan-2012 16:10

Are you running Forefront Protection for Exchange at all? I've had two Exchange servers with excess traffic and it turned out to be the Kaspersky engine stuck on each one. It was downloading about 160MB each hour on https.

ActiveMatrix

88 posts

Master Geek

Reply # 575422 31-Jan-2012 16:46

rhysb: Are you running Forefront Protection for Exchange at all? I've had two Exchange servers with excess traffic and it turned out to be the Kaspersky engine stuck on each one. It was downloading about 160MB each hour on https.

Hi there - We're not running this product no, but also the traffic is between an iPhone and the Exchange Server.

Thanks for your comments.

ActiveMatrix

88 posts

Master Geek

Reply # 575423 31-Jan-2012 16:47

CYaBro: Have you checked to see if there are any sync errors with the phone?
If it is having trouble syncing an email or contact or calendar item then it could be retrying all the time and this would use up data over time.

Hi there,

I'm not too sure how to do this, but I am arranging to get the phone back to our office here as it's at the other end of the country at a site office. Once I get it here I'll be sure to give it a good looking over to see if I can replicate the issue and match any errors with the configuration of the phone or IIS or Event logs on the servers.

CYaBro

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Reply # 575466 31-Jan-2012 17:42

You could log in to their Outlook Web Acces and check the Sync Issues folder.
Any errors / problems should show up in there.

ActiveMatrix

88 posts

Master Geek

Reply # 575475 31-Jan-2012 18:01

CYaBro: You could log in to their Outlook Web Acces and check the Sync Issues folder.
Any errors / problems should show up in there.

Actually that's an excellent idea, thank you kindly! - I'll check that out in the morning.

matts231

29 posts

Geek

Reply # 575612 1-Feb-2012 02:45

I've had these kinds of issues before. It's sometimes when sending a large email attachment that somehow fails over and over. The phone continually tries to resend it, creating the insane data usage.

surfisup1000

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Reply # 575618 1-Feb-2012 07:27

matts231: I've had these kinds of issues before. It's sometimes when sending a large email attachment that somehow fails over and over. The phone continually tries to resend it, creating the insane data usage.

He said attachments were disabled.

freitasm

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Reply # 575622 1-Feb-2012 07:41

ActiveMatrix:
rhysb: Are you running Forefront Protection for Exchange at all? I've had two Exchange servers with excess traffic and it turned out to be the Kaspersky engine stuck on each one. It was downloading about 160MB each hour on https.

Hi there - We're not running this product no, but also the traffic is between an iPhone and the Exchange Server.

Those AV and security software run as plugins on the Exchange server so the traffic would still go to the server. Check that Forefront, Kaspersky, GFI Securit or anything else is running.

Perhaps the Exchange Store has a problem and sync fail for that mailbox? When was the last time you did a backup/consolidation on your server? Is it automated?

surfisup1000:
matts231: I've had these kinds of issues before. It's sometimes when sending a large email attachment that somehow fails over and over. The phone continually tries to resend it, creating the insane data usage.

He said attachments were disabled.

But not from sending. Something stuck in the outbox folder in the phone perhaps?

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