According to Comcast I’ve about doubled my bandwidth allocation of 250gigs for the month of March. How do I track down which device is going crazy? We hardly use the internet at home for more than email and casual web browsing. No movie downloads, no online gaming. We only have one neighbor within wireless range and I use a MAC address access list on the router to ensure only our computers are connected.
Any thoughts on how to identify what might be eating up the gigs?
According to Comcast I’ve about doubled my bandwidth allocation of 250gigs for the month of March. How do I track down which device is going crazy? We hardly use the internet at home for more than email and casual web browsing. No movie downloads, no online gaming. We only have one neighbor within wireless range and I use a MAC address access list on the router to ensure only our computers are connected.
Any thoughts on how to identify what might be eating up the gigs?
Have any boys around the ages of 14-18… lol
So…your kid discovered internet porn.
According to Comcast I’ve about doubled my bandwidth allocation of 250gigs for the month of March. How do I track down which device is going crazy? We hardly use the internet at home for more than email and casual web browsing. No movie downloads, no online gaming. We only have one neighbor within wireless range and I use a MAC address access list on the router to ensure only our computers are connected.
Any thoughts on how to identify what might be eating up the gigs?
Sweet bajeesus…that’s a lot of bandwidth. It can’t be boys at home…they wouldn’t be able to walk with that much p0rn!!!
Usually when that happens around here, it is a hacked machine being used for sharing movies/games.
Someone stealing your wifi or something has installed itself on your machine.
The only other option is Comcast is BSing you in order to get more money out of you. But that cant be the case as Comcast is such a trustworthy company.
Have any boys around the ages of 14-18… lol
Heh. 
I’m using almost ten times as much bandwidth as I was at the previous house and the modem, router, two computers and cell phone that connect are the same equipment I had at the old house.
My wife and I just moved out of our kids house into a house we had built in the country. Only her and I in the house. We have one neighbor that “might” be within range to steal wi-fi, but I doubt he could get a strong enough signal and he doesn’t seem a likely candidate to be a hacker.
I’m thinking of disconnecting my modem and router to see if the usage continues to climb.
Usually when that happens around here, it is a hacked machine being used for sharing movies/games.
Any thoughts on how to identify which machine might be the victim?
Could you go into the router setup and change the settings to reduce the signal to G class & max throughput?
Can Comcast break out the data usage into better detail? what is the ration of data Downloaded to Uploaded? Is the data flow constant thoughout the day or does it come in bursts?
Usually when that happens around here, it is a hacked machine being used for sharing movies/games.
That’s what I was thinking. You don’t download that much stuff or have radical increases in consumption without knowing about it.
~Matt
What kind of router do you have? Log into it and look for the stats page. Also, make sure you can identity every device it knows about.
Could you go into the router setup and change the settings to reduce the signal to G class & max throughput?
Can Comcast break out the data usage into better detail? what is the ration of data Downloaded to Uploaded? Is the data flow constant thoughout the day or does it come in bursts?
The router is a somewhat aged G class. I disconnected all but one computer from the network yesterday and checked the wireless adapter on that box. It shows that in the last 14 days only about 300meg of data passed through it. The router logs show only that machine connecting and the sites accessed make sense – windows liveupdate, norton liveupdate, comcast, and such. Nevertheless, the bandwidth usage count went up by another gig overnight.
My plan now is to disconnect the internet modem altogether, which would give me no devices attached, then watch to see if the bandwidth continues to climb.
Any thoughts on how to identify which machine might be the victim?
Quick and easy way is to pop up the windows task manager…assuming you’re running windows. Assuming you’re running everything thru a router, click on the “Networking” tab and it will show you “Network traffic” in real time for that machine. Most of the time, assuming you’re not downloading, uploading etc etc it should be at zero.
If you’re hacked likely it will be much higher.
I’m running a 100mbs network and going to youtube and streaming a video has me ~1% usage.
With a 10mbs system I’d suspect that might hop between zero and 10% usage.
That should tell you which machine is constantly uploading/downloading. Of course if it’s a serious virus or hack it may have a work around that…don’t know.
From there you can figure out what program is causing it by watching activity under the “Process” tab and see if you have any processes that are using a bunch of CPU time and then googling that process to find out what it is.
That’s not a perfect process but somewhere to start without having to buy anything
~Matt
What kind of router do you have? Log into it and look for the stats page. Also, make sure you can identity every device it knows about.
Older Netgear router. I use the Mac Address access control list, but no encryption. I recognize all of the machines in the approved list, but only one was powered on, and it showed as the only one with an assigned IP address. The router log file looked clean. I’m starting to think it might either be a defective modem that is generating “noise” that Comcast registers as bandwidth, or Comcast has somebody else’s device connected to my account.
Thanks. That seems to match the approach I took last night. It should be interesting to see what the router logs and network adapter on the one computer that is running show tonight, considering that my bandwidth use continues to grow.
Nevertheless, the bandwidth usage count went up by another gig overnight.
“Bandwidth usage” by who’s count? The one that Comcast is saying or one on your machine? If it’s Comcast, just disconnect everything and see if it goes up. If it does then it’s Comcast’s problem, not yours.
If the counter is on your machine then something downloaded/uploaded a gig overnight.
Don’t possible have anything like E-Mule or some other program installed do you? If you do check to see if it’s been hijacked and is running constantly in the background.
~Matt
From the Comcast FAQs site
What is excessive use?Excessive use means bandwidth or data usage that is significantly higher than typical residential usage. Excessive use is very atypical – less than 1% (currently it’s about one tenth of 1%) of Comcast customers today use an excessive amount of data. Excessive users consume so much data that the usage could negatively impact the online service for other customers.
We have heard from customers who have requested that a number be provided to clarify what the company defines as excessive use. We listened, and recently announced that we will implement a new threshold for data usage. As of October 1, 2008, data usage above 250 Gigabytes (“GB”) per month per Comcast High-Speed Internet residential customer account is considered excessive. To reach 250GB in a month, for example, a customer would have to do any of the following:
Send 50 million plain text e-mails (at 5KB/e-mail) Download 62,500 songs (at 4 MB/song) Download 125 standard-definition movies (at 2 GB/movie) Upload 25,000 hi-resolution digital photos (at 10 MB/photo) The following Frequently Asked Questions are intended to help clarify what Comcast means by excessive use and how it handles excessive use situations.
Sorry I don't have an answer to your actual question but I thought the above info was interesting to show just how much bandwith they have you marked as using. If you are not sharing movie torrents then either someone else is using your bandwith or more likely Comcast has their info incorrect. I would call a CSR with Comcast, get their name and direct call back info. Have them create a ticket # for you. Tell them you are going to unplug for x amount of days (maybe do this when you know you will be away from the house for a week) and you would like them to measure the bandwith during this time. Call back when you return and find out if there has been usage. If so, ask them what your next step needs to be as it would appear someone is using your bandwith. You could also just swap out your router for an encypted one and that might shut out your hacker.
while you’re logging onto your router you can change the settings on it so that only known devices can log on to it even if it’s a secured connection that someone has hacked. You’ll need to get the MAC address off the computers that use the router. Then enable MAC address filtering on the router.
Additionally you should check to see if the router itself is generating the traffic that may be causing the spike in bandwidth. If the router is faulting it can send out thousands of packets a minute, which are small but can cause a large amount of traffic over time.
Download 125 standard-definition movies (at 2 GB/movie)
About the only time you’d be running into the 250gb cap under “Normal usage” would be a household that is simultaneously downloading and watching TV etc.
My brother has 3 kids all of whom watch TV on Netflix and play online etc pretty consistently. Get 2-3 TV’s streaming, 2-3 computers going all at the same time for 3-4 hours a day you might get close.
~Matt