bandwlidth drainage

A

Avenue

Expert Member
Joined
Aug 10, 2007
Messages
4,357
Reaction score
17
Location
Johannesburg
So my aunt runs a small company, with typical internet usage. They get emails and visit a few websites thats all.

Currently they are using upwards of 20 GB a month, but there is no reason for it.

they have a wireless internet connection. So what I want to know is, is it possible that one of their neighbours is connecting to their internet and having a free for all?

she also wants to switch their internet off at night, but their freelance tech guy says that they mustn't do that because of some hardware that they are using??
all she could tell me is that its a "billion" something- I assume its "billion" as in the make, but if its a router, I cant see what problems switching it off will cause

what could it possibly be?

unless of course he is pulling up in his car at night and using the internet himself :D
 
If they run a wireless AP on the default settings then it is quite possible that someone else is using it as well.
Easiest way to check that is to change the SSID, change the key, if possible set it to WPA2 and see if the usage goes down.
 
ave said:
she also wants to switch their internet off at night, but their freelance tech guy says that they mustn't do that because of some hardware that they are using??
all she could tell me is that its a "billion" something- I assume its "billion" as in the make, but if its a router, I cant see what problems switching it off will cause
Click to expand...

DODGY!!!

What I would do is to put a Smoothwall up and segment the network into a RED-GREEN-PURPLE segment. This means that RED is from the Internet, GREEN is your normal connected LAN and PURPLE is for Wireless. PURPLE cannot access GREEN.

You can then put URL Filter, Advanced Proxy and SARG on the Smoothwall to get daily/weekly/monthly usage reports.

The high bandwidth usage can also be due to (but not limited to) the following :

1. Spambot/virus on one/more than one PC.
2. Somebody torrenting stuff
3. Wifi signal hijack
 
Like Ook said:

that's DODGY!!!!!

If that's the case then my net should get borked everytime I unplug due to lightening.... Or whatever other reason I have for turning it off.
 
Unscrew the Wifi antenna at night,see if the freelancer complains hehe
 
The_Librarian said:
The high bandwidth usage can also be due to (but not limited to) the following :

1. Spambot/virus on one/more than one PC.
2. Somebody torrenting stuff
3. Wifi signal hijack
Click to expand...

I'll put my money on option 2 ;)
It's either one of the employees or the tech-guy at night :D
 
or the obvious, freelance tech guy using her login account details so if she switched off at night then she could prove someone else was logging in using her account.
 
the freelance tech guy doesn't look very innocent, whats a bet he rolls around with a wifi laptop that's always on but doing nothing most of the day?
 
ave said:
They get emails and visit a few websites thats all.

Currently they are using upwards of 20 GB a month, but there is no reason for it.
Click to expand...

So why are they paying for an internet account that doesn't get capped long before that?

Most routers have a 'statistics' section where you can look at traffic. It is the easiest way to get an idea of how much traffic is going on at the current moment. If the problem is malware or a user doing torrents all day, then you can pick it up quite easily that way. Just unplug the PCs one by one until the high traffic goes away.

I would also suggest turning off Windows updates and any other software updates. If there are a lot of PCs, those updates can add up! But it would take a lot of them to get to 20Gb/month.

In our company, we run a squid proxy server which enables us to lock down the network as well as monitor what sites are visited and where all the bandwidth is going. It also stops most updates (and malware) in their tracks, because you only tell firefox how to get on the internet and not windows in general.

But my real advice to them is to get a new IT guy because he should have noticed this problem long ago and either sorted it out, or explained to them why such high traffic is necessary (maybe there is a legitimate reason for it that they don't know about.)
 
twhitehead said:
So why are they paying for an internet account that doesn't get capped long before that?

Most routers have a 'statistics' section where you can look at traffic. It is the easiest way to get an idea of how much traffic is going on at the current moment. If the problem is malware or a user doing torrents all day, then you can pick it up quite easily that way. Just unplug the PCs one by one until the high traffic goes away.

I would also suggest turning off Windows updates and any other software updates. If there are a lot of PCs, those updates can add up! But it would take a lot of them to get to 20Gb/month.

In our company, we run a squid proxy server which enables us to lock down the network as well as monitor what sites are visited and where all the bandwidth is going. It also stops most updates (and malware) in their tracks, because you only tell firefox how to get on the internet and not windows in general.

But my real advice to them is to get a new IT guy because he should have noticed this problem long ago and either sorted it out, or explained to them why such high traffic is necessary (maybe there is a legitimate reason for it that they don't know about.)
Click to expand...
The tech guy doesn't want them to turn the net OFF at NIGHT....
 
thanks everyone, there is some good advice here.

She recently moved to uncapped, because her internet was costing a fortune. her speed have now been cut down to a crawl with their 10 day rolling window fair use policy.

her isp gave her some software to monitor usage, so this should be interesting. Once we know what the problem is, we can see where to go from there.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X