IT Help - bandwith counter needed!

[Normie]

I am having an argument with my ISP as they have charged me over $700 extra this month saying that I have downloaded nearly 5 Gigs! My account is for 750mb in peak time (7am - midnight) & $0.15 per mb thereafter....
I find this impossible as this account is at home (no teenagers) and have probably downloaded about 20 songs this month:evil:!
All my other months have been way below my quota of 750mb....
To prove my point, they say I need to run a Bandwith Counter to prove there is something wrong.
Can you recommend a good one or have any advice?

 

[Dan]

1st - It is likely witht he download porgram you were uploading to many uses and your upload is counted

2nd - Are you using a wireless connection?

I dont really know of any good ones, try the whirlpool.net.au forums. but I am sure narc will have one beeing such a 1337 haxor!

 

[Dan]

just did a search and found this one. Give it a go

http://www.dumeter.com/

 

[Matabele]

Yeah, an unsecure wireless router could be a problem. Especially as I was down your way last month wandering around with my laptop. (j/k)

We just had one put out here but it was to bust Telstra for not giving us appropriate flow. So much for a fair go for rural areas :lol:

Thanks Barnaby

 

[Narcissus]

Absolutely, unsecured wireless can be a problem... Well, depending on which side of the fence you are

Two links I found for freeware apps (apparently not 'trialware') are:
http://www.lp23.com/bmextreme/ and http://www.paessler.com/prtg/download . To be honest, I haven't done anything like that for a long time.

Like Daniel implied, you gotta remember that 'download limits' aren't just for 'files you download'. Every web page view adds a little to that usage... streaming audio or video will kill it.

Uploads generally count towards your limit and the other thing to make sure of is that you are currently virus, spyware and malware free! If you've got a trojan horse on your computer, that will definitely add to your usage.

I guess the only other thing that we can ask is... who the hell is your ISP???

 

[Normie]

Thanks for all that advice! I have since stopped using my wireless router & done a great purge of all unwanted software. I have updated my virus and spyware software.
Hopefully I can win this argument as my usage has been historically low & the fascists didn't bother to let me know that my account was going over the limit! My previous ISP did this on the 1 occasion that happened.
I use Grapevine, which is run by ActewAGL in the ACT for use on the TransACT broadband network!

 

[byso]

Wireless!

Do you live in an apartment block?

If so you could have some clever IT boffins stealing you're bandwidth.

 

[Dan]

Wireless!

Do you live in an apartment block?

If so you could have some clever IT boffins stealing you're bandwidth.

doesnt need to be an apartment block, the signal can travel up to 100M.

Make sure you secure your wireless router, i can almost garuntee someone has hacked access to your wireless router

 

[byso]

Understand that.

But in an apartment block you "could" have 5 or 10 IT boffins stealing you're bandwidth at any time. Therefore racking up much higher data usage.