Daily data loss - Afrihost & D-Link

B

beeskuiken

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I have a D-Link 2750 (telkom) ADSL router with a D-link 157 3G dongle with my MTN sim.

When I changed from ADSL to Afrihost, I noticed that my monthly usage went up by about 1,5GB.
After I disabled wifi and removed all lan connections, I noticed that I was still using about 50MB per day (= 1,5GB/m).
I assume one can expect a few bytes per day background data just for the idle connection, but not kilo or mega bytes.

Where is the data going?

As far as I know, the D-link hardware do not have any auto firmware update features that could use data.
The extra R150/m for this "background" data will unfortunately be a dealbreaker here for Afrihost.

Any advice?

p
 
beeskuiken said:
I have a D-Link 2750 (telkom) ADSL router with a D-link 157 3G dongle with my MTN sim.

When I changed from ADSL to Afrihost, I noticed that my monthly usage went up by about 1,5GB.
After I disabled wifi and removed all lan connections, I noticed that I was still using about 50MB per day (= 1,5GB/m).
I assume one can expect a few bytes per day background data just for the idle connection, but not kilo or mega bytes.

Where is the data going?

As far as I know, the D-link hardware do not have any auto firmware update features that could use data.
The extra R150/m for this "background" data will unfortunately be a dealbreaker here for Afrihost.

Any advice?

p
Click to expand...

by disabling wifi and LAN, you sure you had absolutely no clients connected to your switch? if so, how long did you actually let is sit idle for testing?
 
Isn't this the famous router with the DNS based hack of some kind?

****

Beyond that, OP change your ISP password and see if the problem goes away.

Failing that plug out the Router completely and see if the problem goes away.
 
beeskuiken said:
The extra R150/m for this "background" data will unfortunately be a dealbreaker here for Afrihost.
Click to expand...

Just to be clear, the extra data is on 3G, not ADSL right?

I have the 2750U as well, but I have never used the 3G failover option. I haven't monitored data usage either. Will see what I can find though.
 
Could be traffic being used up by those pesky scanners*. Nothing much you can do about them, your router should have a logfile, view that and if you see a schit load of connection attempts that are blocked by your firewall then it's pretty safe to assume that it may be the cause.

*Referring to bots that scan IPv4 space, scanning for exploits and unprotected devices that are open to the internet.
 
Looks like I found the culprit, although I don't really understand it....

Although I had zero clients connected to the router, my ADSL cable (telephone line) was still connected. The moment I disconnected it, the data drain on 3G disappeared.

Now how data managed to drain from my 3g connection directly to the ADSL connection, I have no idea (with my ADSL usage showing as zero). This might be something to look out for for those who use a 3g connection as a failover for ADSL - you might be loosing 3g data while using ADSL.

I'm now measuring about 200kB of background data per day (6MB/m) - much better than 50MB per day!

To the helpdesk agents who tried to tell me 1,5GB of background data per month is "expected" - what are you smoking! - its NOT!!!!

p
 
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I find afrihosts support love saying everything is fine, last week I was busy on a live chat with them complaining about my mobile connection and they kept saying everything is fine there side and then all of sudden they ask me if I'm in the Western Cape. Then it was oh we might be having problems in the Western Cape.
 
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