# Program to monitor internet bandwidth usage



## Black Panther (Jun 28, 2015)

I need one, which would you suggest please?

Two years ago my ISP capped our internet at 150GB every month. When one goes over, the internet download speed gets reduced from 30Mbps to 1Mbps.

I never bothered, because either I never exceeded the limit, or they weren't enforcing it. I never checked.

But now for the second month in a row, I started exceeding the limit by the third week of the month! (Yes I'm enjoying a whopping 1Mbps speed as I type...)

I find this very strange, especially since after the birth or our baby I basically quit downloading anything because I hardly find the time!

Now I can't view my usage online but to view it I had to download an android app on my cellphone, and sure enough 2 days ago it showed 155GB downloads. I checked it again today, and it shows 159GB . Which I find weird. The only usage we normally have is our daughter watching youtube vlogs, but she's been doing that for years now ever since she learnt how to switch on a pc, it's not something she started doing these past 2 months. Moreso, these past 2 days she didn't even use the internet because at 1Mbps it's a PITA to watch youtube. 

Is it possible for 4GB to be downloaded in 48 hours just by visiting this forum, facebook and a couple of news sites?
I do have a program which shows which devices are connected to my wifi, so I'm sure no one hacked it. I also checked for viruses, I have the paid version of AVG internet security.

Yes I'm suspecting that the data showing on the App of my ISP is not correct, especially since they've discontinued the package I'm paying for, and every time I'm receiving an email that if I go for their current package I won't be having these type of problems any more....


----------



## Frick (Jun 28, 2015)

150GB is A LOT, even if you stream/download HD video.

https://www.softperfect.com/products/networx/

That seems to monitor how much data is flowing, but it seems it doesn't show where the traffic comes from or goes... Wireshark shows you everything that happens, but it'll be difficult to make sense of it because it will be much data to wade through. tcpview maybe?

EDIT: Hey tcpview has sent/recieved bytes columns! Excellent.

EDIT again: Yes, tcpview will do it. Let it run on the machines (assuming the data is heading to a Windows machine) and it'll tell you which processess/ports are sending/recieving data and how much data is transfered. It doesnt always tell you the remote adresses, but you might be able to capture those with Wireshark.


----------



## HTC (Jun 28, 2015)

I use DUMeter: http://www.hageltech.com/dumeter/about


----------



## AsRock (Jun 28, 2015)

Frick said:


> 150GB is A LOT, even if you stream/download HD video.
> 
> https://www.softperfect.com/products/networx/
> 
> ...




Not totally true we hit 300-700GB a month with ease, watching some Netflix can be a few GB a time easy.

Some routers allow you to limit how much you can use a month like some Netgear ones do.

http://helpdeskgeek.com/networking/limit-bandwidth-on-a-netgear-wireless-router/


----------



## XSI (Jun 28, 2015)

i agree, even so it looks like a lot, but 5GB/ a day with 30Mbps is easy to reach as 123. 
youtube/vlogs/other video especially if its 1080p will eat that in few hours (if not faster)


----------



## blobster21 (Jun 28, 2015)

> Yes I'm suspecting that the data showing on the App of my ISP is not correct



Either that, or your wireless connection has been hacked by your neighbour


----------



## Frick (Jun 28, 2015)

Netflix HD is up to 3GB/hour, which is 50 hours and you'll have to spend a lot of time watching stuff if you want to reach that. And if they've never had a problem before and they actually utilize less bandwidth than before, why doesn't it last as long?


----------



## AsRock (Jun 28, 2015)

Frick said:


> Netflix HD is up to 3GB/hour, which is 50 hours and you'll have to spend a lot of time watching stuff if you want to reach that. And if they've never had a problem before and they actually utilize less bandwidth than before, why doesn't it last as long?



Not always true, and by default 2 people can watch at the same time.


----------



## Frick (Jun 28, 2015)

The panther is prowling, we'll see what se says.


----------



## Devon68 (Jun 28, 2015)

> I had to download an android app on my cellphone, and sure enough 2 days ago it showed 155GB downloads


Wow something isn't right there.


> Is it possible for 4GB to be downloaded in 48 hours just by visiting this forum, facebook and a couple of news sites?


Not a chance. 4GB is a lot even if you browse pictures and everything.


----------



## HTC (Jun 28, 2015)

Devon68 said:


> Wow something isn't right there.
> 
> Not a chance. 4GB is a lot even if you browse pictures and everything.





blobster21 said:


> Either that, or *your wireless connection has been hacked* by your neighbour



Suspect so: this is the most likely scenario, IMO.


----------



## RandomSadness (Jun 28, 2015)

You could use NetLimiter4 :
http://www.netlimiter.com/products/nl4
It allows you to see the current data traffic generated by every program on your computer and gives you the possibility to limit it (Download & Upload).


----------



## remixedcat (Jun 29, 2015)

I'd set up a PRTG server + probes on all the pcs and then add the packet sniffer sensor to it.


----------



## Black Panther (Jul 1, 2015)

I'm positive my wifi isn't hacked because I regularly check the devices connected with Wireless Network Watcher.

The basic reason I started this thread is because I'm not trusting my ISP over stuff which happened recently, and where hundreds of other people complained not just me.

Here's the long story, take out your popcorn, it isn't boring 

I've been with this ISP for ~4 years now, unlike many I am without a contract because when I made the switch from the previous ISP I made it clear that I would switch only if I was without contract.

Originally I used to pay €16 monthly for 15Mbps Unlimited internet + Landline.
Then they increased the speed to 30Mbps.
Slightly more than a year ago they also increased the monthly charge to €19.99.
I hadn't noticed immediately but that at around that time there started being written on my bills that my internet was capped at 150GB. They did this really sneakily, in fact the bills where this clause is not written aren't available to view online but I happen to have kept all the paper copies.

Anyway I never worried about this cap since my internet always remained nice and perfectly stable at 30Mbps whenever I checked.

This year, another charge was sneakily introduced - that for receiving a paper bill. It's minimal, not even a euro per month but I opted out of receiving paper bills.

Now this ISP has discontinued my package to new customers. The cheapest one now is at 30Mbps like mine, without an internet limit (as mine was originally), but with a Docsis3 modem instead of a Docsis2 one. And the price would be €25 per month instead of €19.99.

During the last week of May I found my dl speed reduced to 1Mbps and received this email:



> Dear xxxxxx
> 
> Kindly note that Melita's records are showing that your internet usage (Download and/or Upload) for Account ID xxxxxxx is well above the average amount of data used by all subscribers with the same type of subscription. Your download and upload levels are measured every day for the previous 30 days. In line with Melita's Acceptable Usage Policy and your package Download Limit, your internet speed is being reduced to ensure your usage does not impact other subscribers on the network. At the end of this period you will revert back to your package speed.
> 
> ...



I saw on facebook that it wasn't just me, but hundreds of other subscribers who had my same package had received the same email and had their speed reduced from 30Mbps to 1Mbps.
On 1st June I was back at my fast speed so I didn't bother.

Fast forward to end June, and I'm back at 1Mbps and receiving the same email. I never checked my usage because it doesn't work online, and their app doesn't work on my android v4.4 device even though it should work on android v2.3 onwards. Anyway I checked it from another person's phone and sure enough I was 5GB over the limit.

Come 1st July, I expected to be reinstated back to getting what I was paying for.
When that didn't happen, I called customer support. I got greeted with great emphasis to 'upgrade' because then I would surely not have 'these types of problems' anymore. They even offered me a free month to get me to upgrade on a 2 year contract.

I insisted to know when my speed will be back to normal and guess what? This time they're calculating usage on 'the past 30 days' and not on the data period billed! So every day they remove the oldest day and add the last day, and unless the whole total comes up below 150GB I'd remain at 1Mbps.

Anyway, made me more adamant about now wanting to play their game and 'upgrade' only to have the cap which they introduced later removed.

They also told me that if I remove the service I'd have to give them a month's notice and I'd have to pay for another month_ after _I get disconnected. I seriously doubt that's even legal since I'm not on any contract and never agreed to such stuff.

Anyway, they want to get all their old customers bound by a 2 year contract for €25 per month, playing this silly stunt every month. I'm just going to stay a step ahead making sure now that I stay below 150GB per month.
Which doesn't seem hard to do considering that today is nearly over...




Get ready for hell breaking loose if the data in their 'App' doesn't conform with that of this independent program....


----------



## Capitan Harlock (Jul 1, 2015)

HI i  use a gadget called Network Meter that gives me the total use and the current use.


----------



## Aquinus (Jul 1, 2015)

Well, I can compare with what I get told by Comcast and what my Gateway tells me.

According to Comcast mine varies widely. In April my family (my wife and I are the only one's who use internet, and my wife tends to use Netflix religiously,) was 130GB. In May we used 278GB, and last month (June) we used 390GB.

My Gateway has Munin running on it, so it's keeping tabs of system stats on the box however the zoom feature seems to be not configured with nginx as it stands right now, however my by week and by year usage in contrast to what Comcast tells me I'm using looks like this. Now keep in mind, Munin measures bits per second not in totals.



 



The graphs might not translate to actual usage very well, but my uptime happens to be 25 days and it matches pretty close to last month's usage.

```
root@Sophia:~# uptime
17:54:44 up 25 days,  7:04,  1 user,  load average: 0.00, 0.02, 0.05
root@Sophia:~# ifconfig eth0
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
          inet addr:xxx.xxx.25.229  Bcast:255.255.255.255  Mask:255.255.252.0
          inet6 addr: xxxx::xxxx:xxxx:fe0b:e29f/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:256147376 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:75175532 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:356569206044 (332.0 GiB)  TX bytes:18146517543 (16.9 GiB)
          Interrupt:45 Base address:0x4000
```

My wife uses a lot of Netflix and both her laptop and the TV stream 1080p and it doesn't seem to like having under 25Mbps, so I think it's reasonable to say that 1080p streaming can use around 30Mbps, granted buffering makes it hard to quantify that. Needless to say, I do think streaming video can result in the kind of usage you're describing.

Edit: Youtube is defaulting to HD more than it used to in the past. That alone could be the cause.

Edit #2: I've watched bwm-ng while streaming Netflix 1080p, and 20-30Mbps download seemed normal. Also keep in mind, a little more could be going on on my network and as the "max" section on yearly indicates, my max is ~115Mbps download and it's entirely possible other things could be going on in the background but no where near as bandwidth heavy as streaming HD video.


----------



## remixedcat (Jul 1, 2015)

Here's mine and it shows the most used:


 

and this is only 3 people and I have heavy traffic shaping!!!


----------



## Black Panther (Jul 6, 2015)

HTC said:


> I use DUMeter: http://www.hageltech.com/dumeter/about



It's very rare that I buy a utility if there are free equivalents on the net, but this program *is* _awesome._
Just bought a family licence for up to 5 pc's.


----------



## Nordic (Jul 6, 2015)

Frick said:


> 150GB is A LOT, even if you stream/download HD video.
> 
> https://www.softperfect.com/products/networx/
> 
> ...


I average 350gb a month personally.


remixedcat said:


> Here's mine and it shows the most used:
> View attachment 66199
> 
> and this is only 3 people and I have heavy traffic shaping!!!


What is that software? I have wanted that for my router for so long.


----------



## HTC (Jul 6, 2015)

Black Panther said:


> It's very rare that I buy a utility if there are free equivalents on the net, but this program *is* _awesome._
> Just bought a family licence for up to 5 pc's.



I find it quite useful myself.

There may be others out there that do the same and / or better but i don't know them. Bought the license for up to 3 PCs and renewed it just recently.


----------



## AsRock (Jul 6, 2015)

Black Panther said:


> It's very rare that I buy a utility if there are free equivalents on the net, but this program *is* _awesome._
> Just bought a family licence for up to 5 pc's.



dam that program used to be free lol.


----------



## Cybrnook2002 (Jul 6, 2015)

What kind of router are you using in your home? There is a chance your router has an open sourced firmware available for it, and they typically have great bandwidth monitoring. You can then point the finger at the offending user in your home!!

The problem with a client end monitor is you will need to have it installed and active on every device on your network. Then you will need to go check them daily.


----------



## NC37 (Jul 6, 2015)

www.broadbandreports.com 

Find tools, reviews, and ISPs there. Honestly, if you don't have a contract, I'd consider dumping them. Get an ISP without a cap. Can find one on that site. Even if it is a little slower. General rule of thumb tho...stay away from any ISP ran by a major telco. More likely to find caps and rate hikes. Right now I get net through a local company which resells the packages from the major telco. So I never have to deal with the major telco or come under their policies which would hurt my usage. If I was under a telco, my bill would likely be about double it is now because this telco is well known to rate hike.


----------



## dorsetknob (Jul 6, 2015)

My service is uncapped and unshaped  were i to shop around i could find a better deal cost wise than i currently pay.  I pay more than i could/should because its unshaped and not capped AND i'm on a Rolling contract (1 month at a time ) 
Any NEW CONTRACT would lock me in for between one year and two
that to me because of circumstance is TO BE AVOIDED.
Band width is not brilliant because i'm quite far from the exchange (average 3 1/2 to 5 mbs down 0.8mbs up )
Storage is my problem i can and sometimes dl over 7gig a day  (Watch & delete or burn )


----------



## H82LUZ73 (Jul 7, 2015)

Black Panther said:


> I need one, which would you suggest please?
> 
> Two years ago my ISP capped our internet at 150GB every month. When one goes over, the internet download speed gets reduced from 30Mbps to 1Mbps.
> 
> ...



 Black what i do is just unplug the main modem from the cable then phone the isp to explain,I have done this for 8 months now. if they keep doing it, they will over charge you then auto switch you to some new upgrade with more gig a month download plan just to make money .I went through this with cogeco,So they charged me over 12 gigs one month and i phone for a tech to come to the house ,,,with the modem gone ie with me in Jeep  
Then i asked the tech guy to explain how i can be accused of downloading porn like the guy in the office did.Ever since i have had no overage and the fool that accused me of the pron could not prove it so i got my plan upped to 250 gig a month for the same price as my 150 gig a month plan


----------



## remixedcat (Jul 7, 2015)

james888 said:


> I average 350gb a month personally.
> 
> What is that software? I have wanted that for my router for so long.




It's the firmware that is on the Cisco Meraki Z1..   It's awesome


----------



## Nordic (Jul 7, 2015)

remixedcat said:


> It's the firmware that is on the Cisco Meraki Z1..   It's awesome


I have ddwrt. I once tried to find something that did pretty much that. I found some unfinished github code and that was all.


----------



## remixedcat (Jul 7, 2015)

yeah this router is an enterprise grade one though.


----------



## xvi (Jul 7, 2015)

I've seen people use more than 150GB fairly easily. Depends on what the typical usage is.


remixedcat said:


> I'd set up a PRTG server + probes on all the pcs and then add the packet sniffer sensor to it.


I knew you'd be in here suggesting PRTG. 
I was going to suggest PRTG + SNMP off the router to see if you're actually seeing the same amount of data going out as your ISP is. Depending on the router, you may be able to monitor traffic in real-time to all clients, but that's not too common of a feature. I like remix's idea though. You might be able to just add the SNMP Windows feature and monitor via that, although I've never tried that myself.
If you need near-real-time SNMP monitoring, I like Flowalyzer. Not as good for longer periods of monitoring.


----------



## remixedcat (Jul 7, 2015)

You can add several types of windows sensors, snmp, wmi, and some others.


----------



## ChevyOwner (Jul 7, 2015)

Frick said:


> 150GB is A LOT, even if you stream/download HD video.



Not really. Here we use over 250GB in a month easily. This also includes before CenturyLink upgraded the service here a few years ago, and it went from oversold 7mbit/s. (normally 4-5mbits download) Now we have their 12mbit service it's normally around 13.5mbit/s. Before anyone asks no I don't  know how much is used per month now.


----------



## Mussels (Jul 7, 2015)

problem with any app or software, is that its only going to show that one device at a time - not your global usage.


you can install a program onto every PC and see if one does happen to be chewing through it, i'd start with that youtube heavy box.


----------



## Black Panther (Jul 7, 2015)

Mussels said:


> problem with any app or software, is that its only going to show that one device at a time - not your global usage.



Not really  







I think they've got for android too, but we just keep wifi switched off since we do not use our phones for the net at home.

All things apart, the above screenshot is interesting in that with a 150GB per month we should be using over 5GB *daily* to go over. However the main 2 pc's (mine and the kiddo's) show only slightly more than 7GB between them for the first 7 days of this month...


----------



## remixedcat (Jul 7, 2015)

Do you have any software updates using a ton of B/W I find skype using a bunch and I've tried to block skype upates and it's not very easy!!! -_- all skype does is try to put more ads and screw with people's sound settings and I want it blocked forever on my network and that's becoming harder to do since they keep using new ports and stuff. and they've changed the apps.skype.com to not be used anymore and they use some other site so it's impossible to firewall updates.

Thinking about ditching skype altogether but too many friends use it -_- same as the hubs... -_- uggggh!


----------



## Octopuss (Aug 17, 2015)

Any updates? I've just discovered the thread and it's an interesting reading.

Also, where are you from, Panther? Bandwidth limit in year 2015, what the actual fuck? That's so 1995.


----------



## Mussels (Aug 17, 2015)

Octopuss said:


> Any updates? I've just discovered the thread and it's an interesting reading.
> 
> Also, where are you from, Panther? Bandwidth limit in year 2015, what the actual fuck? That's so 1995.



or you know, most of the world. very few places have unlimited data caps.


----------

