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Cell C - Possible Data Usage Inflation?
- Thread starter renierp
- Start date
My Skype has been online all the time (since 5pm) and it does not seem to have made a difference.
I'm not convinced Skype is at fault, but it was the only thing generating any sort of traffic when I was analysing my traffic. :erm:
It will however have supernode disabled via registry when I start it up again.
I will leave supernode config enabled for now, and we can see if my results start deviating from yours all of a sudden. I have an SPI Firewall active on my router, not sure if this will have the same effect as a NAT Firewall with respect to supernode behaviour
Tick
Senior Member
They definitely do, I proved it with a simple test, as posted on this thread:
But yes, that is when the session ends.
I suppose if your router is set to auto-reconnect, and there are connectivity problems (like the frequent disconnect problems many users are having), a pattern like the above could probably occur all on its own. Since there are often little things using small amounts of traffic in the background (e.g. Skype), then frequent disconnects and auto-reconnects could probably eat up significant amounts of your Cell C bandwidth balance (1MB multiplied by number of reconnects) without the router's own counters registering, since there was little real traffic, just a lot of round-ups. Does your router log reconnects?
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I wonder if they have not made changes on their side recently? You are not the first person to say that it gets rounded to MB, but my current balance always have decimal values, so they do not seem to round to the nearest MB, but rather 10Kb or so.
I doubt, if you are using a router, the connection should stay connected all the time (unless something goes wrong somewhere).
The way I see it (and the more experienced guys could give a hand here if I am wrong):
The connection is never really closed by the router itself, there are sessions being started on an open connection when any client on the network requests data, and closed afterwards, but your connection stays active until, well, disconnected (or lost signal for that matter).
I doubt, if you are using a router, the connection should stay connected all the time (unless something goes wrong somewhere).
The way I see it (and the more experienced guys could give a hand here if I am wrong):
The connection is never really closed by the router itself, there are sessions being started on an open connection when any client on the network requests data, and closed afterwards, but your connection stays active until, well, disconnected (or lost signal for that matter).
Tick
Senior Member
I don't know, but I did that test just a couple of days ago, and it is 100% definitely rounding up as a matter of fact. Maybe different packages are billed differently? Mine is the 5GB/mo once-off up-front with black dongle. Plug it into the USB and try it in Windows. I suspect it will behave the same. You can see in Windows exactly how many bytes have been transferred in the session by going to the connection 'Status' dialog. I confirmed in each case that for each of those sessions I used at most a few thousand bytes, over literally a few seconds. So over three sessions of only a few thousand bytes each, right after one another, 3MB had come off the balance, even though I confirmed for 100% fact I'd only used a total of maybe 10 or 20 thousand bytes. Those MB never came back. It thus simply CANNOT be the case that the balance was declining in decimal MB amounts between sessions, EVEN IF the reported balance is rounded.
No no, listen to me. Lots of people have been reporting 'frequent disconnects' lately with Cell C (e.g. they can't be online more than a minute then get kicked off, over and over, seemingly mostly during peak times) (see this thread: http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/298583). With the Windows-based software by default if you get disconnected, you have to manually reconnect, so it won't cause major bandwidth inflation problems. The disconnects are caused by problems with the Cell C network - NO router can prevent that happening, it's technologically impossible, it would have to be a magic router, since the problems are Cell C side. If your dongle is plugged into a 3G router, and the Cell C network causes the dongle to disconnect, the session will be over. Most routers are usually configured by default to auto-reconnect on disconnect from the network side, because the router's purpose is to sit on the LAN/Wifi and provide local connectivity to everyone using the router. Thus if the router is set to auto-reconnect, and Cell C kicks the dongle off every minute or so for (say) an hour, you will have 60 reconnects. During each of these sessions, Skype will use a few thousand bytes or so, and Cell C will then round each of these up to 1MB, eating 60MB of the balance in that one hour. If your router logs reconnects, you should be able to confirm if this has been happening. (Please, read closely what I'm saying, I AM one of the more "experienced guys" on the forum, I have worked with networks on a technical level for over a decade, I'm not just spouting random nonsense, you don't seem to be reading what I'm writing, you just gloss over and assume I'm not saying anything useful.) Log into your router's admin interface and see if you can find disconnect or error logs of some sort.
(*Edit* here is an example of the sort of thing I am trying to explain to you: http://wl500g.info/showpost.php?p=186299&postcount=3 ... there is a user getting quite frequent disconnects of a Huawei dongle on a 3G router, and looking at the logs to show the disconnects and session times ... combine the abovementioned 'test' of mine with Cell C's "frequent disconnections" problem and you could quite feasibly have your 'data inflation' problem explained right there. *Edit2* To eat 700MB like this, you would only need an average of 23 disconnects a day over the course of a month. That many reconnects is not unthinkable even if you simply have poor reception, and not even factoring in the Cell C's network problems side of things. Since the latter are mostly peak time things, it could happen when you're not even at your computer, you could have 10 or 20 just between say 3 and 7 PM (which is when I had most 'frequent disconnect' problems)).
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Sounding a bit condescending there bud?
Anyhow, I am aware of that and I am also one of the users who experienced that quite often about a month ago. But from a theoretical point of view (and this is how it currently is for me) the connection stays open. I agree with you on what is currently happening with some users, and you make valid points.
But my connection has not been dropped by cell c recently (and I know this because currently my router does not redial the connection, so that I can pick up on network anomalies)
ajax
Executive Member
I don't get the 1 MByte per connection drop in my data bundle balance.
In MDMA *101# => 5008.41 MB
Connect and use 4.2 kByte and disconnect.
*101# => 5008.39 MB
Connect and use 3.96 kByte and disconnect.
*101# => 5008.36 MB.
It looks like the minimum of 25kByte per connection applies in my case.
In MDMA *101# => 5008.41 MB
Connect and use 4.2 kByte and disconnect.
*101# => 5008.39 MB
Connect and use 3.96 kByte and disconnect.
*101# => 5008.36 MB.
It looks like the minimum of 25kByte per connection applies in my case.
My balances aren't ending with .00MB any more.
neither does mine. I assume that something went wrong with the system upgrade, and that they have now realized their fault and fixed it. Or the tried to minimize the free data they allocated to us in Feb..
Also, usage is still spot on (router claims 2MB more than Cell C, which seems accurate enough considering cellc.co.za is unmonitored)
Last night I found that I have only 1.3GB left for the rest of the month, out of a total of 5GB.
This shocked me a bit as I rarely used up 3GB in a month with my ADSL account.
So I started investigating and found the Call History Search feature on the CellC web dashboard. This gives you something similar to an itemised bill.
So I have noticed lots of entries, most of them unaccounted for. It is not clear as to what the unit of the values in the Usage column is. So I am not really able to attribute those values to anything I might have downloaded at the specific times in order to try and account for each entry.
There seems to be many entries and very suspicious data usage overnight when I was asleep.
I have a 3G router that was left switched on, and all my other devices were off.
Can someone please explain to me what the unit of the Usage column is on the web dashboard? I'd like to follow it up properly.
Thanks!
This shocked me a bit as I rarely used up 3GB in a month with my ADSL account.
So I started investigating and found the Call History Search feature on the CellC web dashboard. This gives you something similar to an itemised bill.
So I have noticed lots of entries, most of them unaccounted for. It is not clear as to what the unit of the values in the Usage column is. So I am not really able to attribute those values to anything I might have downloaded at the specific times in order to try and account for each entry.
There seems to be many entries and very suspicious data usage overnight when I was asleep.
I have a 3G router that was left switched on, and all my other devices were off.
Can someone please explain to me what the unit of the Usage column is on the web dashboard? I'd like to follow it up properly.
Thanks!
OP here
Not that I am saying you HAVE used the data, keep in mind the speed of the device, it is quite easy to download much more than you usually would
Looking at the call history search feature (I thought that was for calls only, since I don't make calls from the SIM, never bothered to look at this. Good to know)
Sad part is, I cannot seem to figure out what the units are. It does not seem to be Kb, KB, b or B, so I assume it is a billing increment that they use (does not seem to bw 1KB or 10KB, which were my initial assumptions). If no one can crack this I will play with the numbers when I have some time to see if I can figure this out. Alternatively CellC Rep can save us all some trouble and just reply to this thread.
OP here
Not that I am saying you HAVE used the data, keep in mind the speed of the device, it is quite easy to download much more than you usually would
Looking at the call history search feature (I thought that was for calls only, since I don't make calls from the SIM, never bothered to look at this. Good to know)
Sad part is, I cannot seem to figure out what the units are. It does not seem to be Kb, KB, b or B, so I assume it is a billing increment that they use (does not seem to bw 1KB or 10KB, which were my initial assumptions). If no one can crack this I will play with the numbers when I have some time to see if I can figure this out. Alternatively CellC Rep can save us all some trouble and just reply to this thread.
You have a point about the speed and that it is easy to download more. I am pretty adamant that my surfing habits haven't changed much.
Thanks for looking at the Call History Feature. Glad I could be helpful in providing you with an extra feature for checking your usage
Would love to hear what the units are. This currently remains a big mystery!