ADSL, whats the point?????

[Ram]

I was wondering if anyone could explain to me what the point of ADSL is. If you get a 3gig account which is expensive and all you can do is browse a few web pages and be capped within a week. NO DOWNLOADING, just browsing. How is this possible. Are all of you guys happy with using just 3 gigs and being cut off so soon. I have cybersmart 3gig, with a telkom 384 speed account.

Its so dissapointing, i waited so long for this and all i get out of it is a week of just browsing.

 

[BrianB]

Get a local IS account for downloading you can get 30gigs for R130.

 

[Highflyer_GP]

Get an IS account for your downloading and use your Cybersmart account for international browsing. Use routesentry to split the two accounts into local and international.

 

[Ram]

but i havnt been downloading anything. What do you mean get a local for downloading. How does this work. Sorry im a bit new to this.

 

[matt loves telkom]

you cant be serious that you killed 3 gigs in one week by just browsing....what were you browsing ?

 

[Ram]

I cant believe it either. I have honestly just been browsing, sites like myspace, checked my hotmail and one or two other flash sites. No downloads, no live audio or video streaming. And not in a week, just 5 DAYS.

 

[ziglet]

Yea people dont realise you go to bebo and myspace and people have that "flash tv" and while us poor south africans are thinking what a pretty myspace page, we dont realise halfway down is some arb video streaming and raping our precious international cap...

Have 4mbit at home, bought dad 1gb prepaid webafrica, he found youtube and next day the account was capped,lol

 

[Ram]

So basically, if I wish to browse happily and care-free, I need like 10GB which would cost me a ****load in this backward country.

*****, this sucks.

 

[ziglet]

Life is not that bad, really. I mean ive done 45gigs this month so far and paid probably R250ish in isp costs...

Actually got an sms to go pay phone bill tomorrow, im scared to see it with me upgrading to 1024 :/

 

[Ram]

I just don't know what to do. I could upgrade but that would cost me and I can't afford it at the moment

So you've used 45gigs, I don't understand, how much exactly does that cost you?

 

[ziglet]

You need to sit down and look at what you are browsing / wanting to do with your broadband connection...

I buy a 1gig webafrica prepaid account and a 30gig local IS account(and friends buy me more if they want stuff) for downloading.

You can set up your pc or router to connect to both accounts and route the international traffic through one connection whilst the local goes through the other. To download everyone uses the IS news server which up until lately has been an awesome resource but is being upgraded at the moment.

If it goes back to how it was, you can download almost anything you ever dreamed of at your max line speed and this is local so it would not affect your international cap...

If you are just into browsing then, openweb offers a proxy service that allows you to use your 30gigs local to browse international sites, unfortunately they limit those speeds to 192k...

 

[Ram]

Thanks Ziglet.

Basically what I need it for is to manage myspace account, check my hotmail and some browsing, and I though with adsl I might be able to catch up on some of those tv episodes I've missed, but I suppose there's no chance of that with the crap they offer. I basically only browse international sites. I have Telkom's 384 speed with a Cybersmart 3G account.

I don't understand, it sounds like you've got a good system going there, do all your downloads go through your local connection? What about flash websites and such?

 

[icepick_1986]

Thanks Ziglet.

I have Telkom's 384 speed with a Cybersmart 3G account.

I still dont understand how you could possibly use up so much, this cant be right? Is it outgoing or incoming that is high?

Have you scanned your pc for viruses, spyware etc?

Do you use skype? or any p2p software? wait....do u have children?

 

[Ram]

I also dont understand. I have been managing this account as i wanted to see how long 3 gig would last.

I have checked for virus and found nothing.
I have no p2p programs on my pc.
Its the outgoing that seems higher.
But for a session of like 3-5 hours it is showing a usage of like 0.1860 gigs.

 

[icepick_1986]

And you have checked with your ISP that there has been no abuse on your account?As in usage from another line?
Web Africa has a service whereby you can lock your account to one line.

Perhaps change your DSL password. Do you have a wireless router? get a bandwidth monitor of your own from download.com.

 

[matt loves telkom]

your account must be abused.
cauz on days when im 'lazy' to download i just surf and bearly exceed 50 megs for the day.100 megs pushing it.So id say youre definetly being abused.and i agree on getting a bandwidth monitor

 

[Ram]

Really? Flash sites and all? It's so weird, all I do is browse and maybe watch a low resolution trailer or two, so some of them are flash pages but still, I've basically abused 3G in four days? I don't understand it. My service provider say that it has definately come from my line only, and it's not a wireless router.

I'll definately download that bandwidth monitor, thanks matt.

 

[Highflyer_GP]

Double click your internet connection in the taskbar next to your clock. Check if any data is being transferred when your connection is idle (close all browser windows, instant messengers etc.) and if it is then at what rate it's being transferred.

If there is data transfer on an idle connection then it could be something running in the background. ctrl+alt+delete go to processes and look for anything out of the ordinary which shouldn't be there. If you can't track it down then it could well be spyware. A good place to start would be to get ewido anti-spyware from Grisoft's website and do a complete scan on your system. Have your firewall enabled if you have winXP Service Pack 2. If you don't have a firewall, get one.

 

[bullfrog]

I have spoken to him on msn and have pretty much cleared all the basics. No router hacking to steal password, no p2p, no kids downloading and no wireless.

One thing that seems strange is that it's uploading that's higher. Main cause for high outgoing is p2p > people downloading from you, uploading things to sites like websites, big files or pictures, sending large amounts of emails or lastly a virus sending itself all over the place via email or some other means. One other thing mentioned above is that it could be an inside job.

Like the idea of getting a bandwidth monitor. You could also check at the bottom right of the screen in the task bar. There should be 2 screens that come on everytime you dial a connection. Right click on the internet one and click status. Under activity you can see what you have sent and recieved as well as the amount of time the connection has been active. I would suggest that after a normal session of surfing to check the amount of usage as well as the time to see if they corrospond with 2 gigs in 5 days.

So if there is nothing that you find that explains the high usage then I'de suggest getting a prepaid 1 gb account from http://www.webafrica.co.za to see if the usage is still so high. If it's lower then you know something is going on. Then atleast you can figure out if it's from your side or from the ISP.

 

[Highflyer_GP]

Bullfrog I had the same problem when I first had ADSL installed almost 2 years ago. Exactly the same problem with uploading being way higher even on an idle connection. The only thing that fixed it was a complete reformat, installing Service Pack 2, enabling the firewall, installing anti-spyware and then do a complete system scan. This all had to be done before even attempting to connect to the internet. Have the same setup since then and no problems so far. I'm about 90% certain that it's some form of malware.