Bandwidth usage and being capped

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6Darkie9

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My husband and I both play WoW. He also plays Eve Online from time to time. Now my problem is the following: We have both been playing WoW for about three years. We have been using Ventrilo for raid purposes. We have a 4gig account with Telkom on a 4meg line. Our 4gig account used to last us for the whole month given there are no major patches for WoW. If there are then we buy 2 x 1 gig booster for patch download purposes.

For the past 3 years we have been doing the above and do not download anything else until last month and 4gig or 6gig at the most lasts us for the whole month (September 09). Since last month we've been using a 1 gig booster in 2 days where it used to last us at least 10 days. Our 4 gig account lasted us less than 10 days. All in all we went through 13 gig in total, which is just ridiculous. We topped up the 4 gig with an additional 4gig, used 3 x 1 gig boosters and topped up one of the boosters with an extra 2 gig.

We have also now resorted to not use vent. My husband only goes onto vent for our raids so that I can hear what is said through his speakers and he doesn't speak on it at all. And even then according to Telkom's internet usage tracker we use 200meg.

This is my usage for September as from the usage tracker just on my 4 gig account:

Blended: Downloaded : 7.2457 GB
Uploaded : 826.0115 MB
Total Bandwidth used : 8.0523 GB
Total Usage for September : 8.0523 GB

Local: Downloaded : 1.3383 MB
Uploaded : 0.3219 MB
Total Bandwidth used : 1.6602 MB
Total Usage for September : 1.6602 MB

My husband is convinced that it is Ventrilo that is doing this, but I can't accept that as we've been using it for such a long time and never had this problem. The guy on server side has even run a codec to decrease the usage and still it chows 200meg an evening with one of us on it and not speaking on it.

So far for October we've gone through 6 gig (4 gig + two 1 gig boosters). I am currently on my 3rd booster.

Does anyone have any idea how this can be possible? I'm baffled because we're doing nothing different to what we used to do in the past. I've run virus scans to check if there might have been "something" that steals our bandwidth. I'm really at my wits end here. Any feedback or help will be greatly appreciated.
 
Try getting software like Netlimiter and check what is eating your bandwidth. It records what application uses what amount of bandwidth.

I think you might have something in the background eating away you cap. And btw. 200mb for a night of raiding and vent is about right. Depending on if its 10 or 25man I think it averages between 130-200mb or something.

Just check if there isnt something running or downloading in the background. Might be antivirus running updates or windows. Etc. but using that amount is rather ...well too much.
 
What's all that (with the boosters) cost you? Is it not better to get a higher capped solution and just not worry about it??
 
Well Budza, our Telkom account is about R1500 p/month and the extra booster and topups cost us a further R500 to R600.

I will check out Netlimiter. I turn my windows automatic updates on maybe once a month otherwise it's turned off. We are both using Avast antivirus and it updates the virus database every day.

Thanx guys, will look into this
 
1stly DROP telkom

If you want to stay with Saix based bandwith (the only reason for that is Unshaped) then use someone like Axxess.

Maybe you should also look @ something like the Afrihost offer (R29/gb) + then use lowerping etc with it. Works out way cheaper!

BUT if you say you are doing exactly the same as you used to (and I highly doubt that tbh) then there is really somehting wrong. You need to start monitoring things, scanning etc etc. (try BWMeter as a usage monitor)

Looking @ BW usage:
So WOW only usually takes around 130-180mb per weeknight (casual wow) for most ppl and if you play more on weekends that can go to up towards 300mb per day. (personally when raiding 25 man during the week I use +- 200-230MB a day. Thats WOW, lowerping, Vent & bit of e-mail and browsing for the day)

So lets say you play 20 days a month @ 200mb a day... thats 4GB
Then x 2 for your hubby also, gives us 8GB
Thats excluding the Vent, Eve (bull****), his porn and spam etc

So 8GB usage looks pretty normal to me for your situation.
 
6Darkie9 said:
Well Budza, our Telkom account is about R1500 p/month and the extra booster and topups cost us a further R500 to R600.
Click to expand...

R2000 a month on internet and you don't have uncapped?:confused:

get uncapped?
 
In reply to SnowWar, you can doubt all you want. As I've said we've been using 6 gig in total at the most for like the past three years including vent, stuff like youtube and downloading 800 meg patches for wow, and it lasted us the whole month every month. Until last month when we got totally screwed over.

Thanx for the links Budza, will definitely be checking out another option coz this is just un acceptable tbh.

Keeper, do u have a link to ISP that offers uncapped? Would definitely look at that too.
 
Just some insight here from what I've experienced.

WoW itself doesn't use much bandwidth and nor does Ventrilo unless you're guild master or whoever manages the Ventrilo server is using some really high quality codec. Even then I doubt it would explain the usage.

In terms of raiding one possible link could be specific add-ons. Download an add-on called Spydon which lets you check what add-ons other people in your raid/party/guild are using and what information the add-ons are sending to you. While the majority of add-ons use a very minimal amount of bandwidth certain ones will eat it.

Few to watch out for:

Gearscore - This is the bloody bane of my raiding experience, if 5 - 6 people use this add-on simultaneously it will start to use about 35Kb/s - 50Kb/s of bandwidth. This is also the number 1 add-on that causes me to lag and DC. The spam this piece of **** sends is horrible. Try and encourage everyone in your guild to not use it as it's crap and a bandwidth whore.

DoTimer - Ever wondered hat causes people to DC immediately as they zone in? It's about 55 lines of DoTimer spam hitting them instantly. DoTimer likes to talk to other add-ons for no real reason and can be a huge pain. The zone in spam is huge and can attest for some of the usage.

Forte Xorcist - A great add-on in itself but it also likes to talk to other people using Forte Xorcist while it runs. This is fine unless someone is using an out of date version of it at which point the 2 versions fall into an endless loop sending version info to each other which will chew bandwidth.

Deadly Boss Mods - Does the same thing as Forte Xorcist except it sends even more redundant info to other DBM users if they or you have out of date versions.


Those are about the biggest and most painful add-ons bandwidth wise that I have encountered. I know people are going to argue that add-ons leave such a small foot print and use hardly any bandwidth but if you're absolutely sure it's nothing else then it's worth looking at.

As someone else suggested you can use netlimiter, even the free version will tell you what processes are using bandwidth.

EDIT

I wouldn't advise using Afrihost for gaming, they shape ports, call center confirmed it to me, and thus you'd probably get terrible latency in WoW. What I'm going to be doing is using Afrihost 5GB as my normal browsing and then using Web Africa Unshaped 1GB account for raiding. Thats R125 + R145 for 5GB of normal data and 1GB of gaming. You could probably do the same with with their 10GB account and get 10GB of browsing/downloading and a 1GB Web Africa account for gaming. That would be R290 + R145 and thus cheaper than what you currently use.
 
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Thanx so much Odom. I have had the exact same views regarding wow and vent. I've never heard of anyone that plays wow that goes through 13 gig in one month just because they use vent.

Our GM is based in the UK and he owns the vent server. They recently implemented a codec which seems to be Speex at 16KHz 16bit 7quality and from what they've read that should downgrade the usage.

As for addons, I'm not sure who uses what but DBM has been a required addon for our guildies for raids. The officers however have recently been trying out VBM (Vision Boss Mods) which is supposed to be more lightweight than DBM. That Spydon thing sounds really interesting, gonna look at it now.
 
One sad reality I'm sort of starting to accept is that WoW is just becoming more and more bandwidth intense. I remember raiding last year March in Mount Hyjal with vent going and still only using around 80MB of bandwidth a night.

Not much you can do there I suppose.
 
from my EXp

i have been playing wow happily for the last 3 years.. on a 1 gig cap raiding and all (iburst)

now my gf and myself plays... we go through about 3 gig in 10-15 days

i have found the coding in world of warcraft has become more cumbersome to south africa eg level 3 delays etc etc
as they are bigger packages.. there is more packet loss

we use TS and yeh.

but anyway.. GL though also look for any malware.. had a virus once that downloaded Pr0no's .... and i found all the movies on my gf's pc.. i knew it was a virus cause i defo know she wouldnt download and she doesnt even know where :P
 
Pseudonym, no we don't have a wireless modem. As for a WPA key I'm a noob coz I dunno what that is. The thought being hacked has crossed my mind but not sure how to go about checking if I/we are.

I have done a full virus scan on my pc yesterday and currently busy with my husband's pc. I did find the following on my pc and moved it to the virus chest as recommended by Avast:

Win32:Tibia-CB (Trojan that steals user accounts and user data for online games) - Our wow accounts haven't been hacked tho.
Win32:Trojan-gen (Virus/Worm)
Win32:FakeAlert-N (Trojan that downloads rogue security updates/alerts)
Win32:Spycrush (Tool - Rogue security program that gives false warning messages, misleading scan results)
Win32:Adware-gen (Adware that generates popup ads)
Win32:Agent-WPP (Trojan) Couldn't find any info on this one

To Voltage and Odom, tbh, WotLK has been out since December 08 and even then we didn't have any bandwidth problems. Only started last month. From the beginning of this month up to today we've used 6 gig, busy with our 7th now. A bit better but still not what it used to be.
 
Some good tips Odom :) BUT 1GB of unshaped don't last long when you are raiding seriously. (3-4gb should do - 200mb/day, 4-5 days a week)

I've myself always raided with Saix based unshaped + lowerping for the lowest and most stable connection, BUT it did cost me!, but my guild also payed for me to play wow.

Yes afrihost uses IS based bandwith and its semi-shaped, BUT thats why you have a service like Lowerping...
And from my testing with afrihost (IS semi-shaped) + lowerping its pretty damn close to stable @ <300ms during 25 man raids for me during the past 2 weeks. (thou I am NOT raiding seriously anymore)
I'd say allot depends on your line (LA & noise) also, but this side things are good.

Thing is a 5GB Afrihost acct would cost you R145
Lowerping R68
So that adds up to R213 for 5GB of WoW-ing @ 300ms

While 5GB Unshaped Saix would cost you in the region of R500 and then normal people (ie resonable distance from the exchange, line quality etc) probly get around 400ms latency - Thats what I get with unshaped only (using no lowerping)

6Darkie9, I think you might have found your problems there... Trojan's & spyware like that tries or do send out a crapload of data during a month.
If you ask my opinion, currently for a home PC there is 1 piece of software that's miles ahead of the others, spend some money and get yourself Kaspersky Internet Security
 
Thanx for all the replies guys, definitely have a few options available now.
 
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