Duplicate sessions counting towards our cap

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rugbyjock

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I just logged into the Axxess homepage today to check on my bandwidth usage for October... and got a very interesting surprise. I don't usually check these numbers in much detail since there are lots of them and they aren't formatted nicely to read, so I just check the totals. But today...

  1. On 8 separate occasions this month, I have duplicate sessions listed. These range from 1271 bytes d/l & 930 bytes u/l to a killer at 7.5 Mb d/l & 152.7 Mb u/l.
  2. 6 of these "duplicates" were true duplicates in the sense of the same data occuring twice. 1 occurred 3 times, and another 4 times.
  3. For each duplicate, the bytes downloaded and uploaded matched 100%, while the session start/end times differed by a few seconds.
  4. I spoke to Axxess earlier and was informed that occasionally these duplicates to come through from SAIX, but they are rare - 8 times for 1 user in 1 month is not rare, according to my definition of "rare"
  5. Axxess also confirmed for me that these duplicates do COUNT TOWARDS THE CAP.

Apart from all of this, according to my bandwidth usage this month, I have uploaded slightly over 3 gigs, and downloaded about 1.3 gigs... I know for a fact that I have downloaded over 3 gigs from BitTorrents this month, which would mean I've probably uploaded about 5 gigs from Torrents alone. Not to mention everything else that has passed through my connection.

What is happening here? Is my bandwidth usage being misreported? Are entries simply being left out? Are these numbers being made up? Will I suddenly get a whole bunch of extra entries appearing one day that will count towards this month's cap? Or will they come through next month when my bandwidth will be somewhat more precious?

I have to say that if this sort of things happens fairly regularly with ADSL accounts, then how can we realistically be charged "per gigabyte" if we know for sure that our bandwidth usage, as reported from SAIX, is potentially very inaccurate?

Does anyone else experience this problem?

Here's a link to my October Bandwidth Usage, with duplicates shown in red.


Your thoughts?
 
U kow, I've noticed this as well, but then the nextday the duplicates are gone and all seems well again.
As to not getting booked for usage, maybe you shouldn't point things like that out.
;)
 
Had the same problem, phoned them and they sorted it out quick quick.
 
thisgeek said:
Me same as James.
Click to expand...
That's what I did too, but what worries me is that I've only noticed this now after being with Axxess for about 4 months. And before that with Telkom ISP. I sit here sipping my coffee wondering how many Rands, priced per gig, are disappearing through duplicates like this?

In my case, close on 200mb in one month. Multiply that out and the numbers get big.

As an afterthought, I wonder how these duplicates arise. If SAIX shunts billing info across to the ISP *with* duplicates in it, then the ISP surely won't be too excited about removing duplicates since they're paying for it. On the other hand, if SAIX data is *without* them, then is it the ISP introducing duplicates? I find this harder to believe since surely the ISP won't modify (definitely not do inserts at least) the data that they receive.

Has anyone had this problem with an ISP other than Axxess?
 
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my account is wierd too, 1st the thingy shows i have duplicates then it shows that the readying of how much i used wa wrong. -confused- anyways hopefully nxt month i remeber to keep a close eye on it cause its annoying.
 
One thing I'venoticed is that my SASA stats analyser always shows a higher reading than my Axxess account so, I'm not complaining too much...
 
Same me .Phoned them , promised that it will be sorted out . Until now... NOTHING
 
It happened with me as well with Axxess and Telkom as ISP's. So the fault must be with SAIX. Didn't moan before as it didn't matter much.

Is there a link to a reliable bandwidth measurement available as I will definitely watch it more carefully from Nov. 1 (10gigs is a mere drop in the ocean in a decent society)
 
hrm i'm watching the saix userstats now cause that one seems more accurate for me/no duplicates. currently mine is like 200MB difference.. With the comming per gig cap.. every little bit is gonna be contended cause you pay for what you get etc. i can for see lotsa calls being made to isp's, and telkom adsl esp mid month.
 
Well had the same prob, the prob has to be with axxess as the stats on the saix radius server are right, i think axxess when they update dont get all the info again they just try append to the list and this is probably where it stuffs out. There service is shocking and they never fixed my stats prob 2 date. And yes they are behind the siax stats as they dont update regularly they are norm a day or 2 behind so make them pay i got 60 gig off a 30gig account and so can you :)
 
I spoke to some friends yesterday who told me that Axxess does their own authentication, is that right? This would imply that they are running their own RADIUS server and are suffering from what seems to be a problem with Free RADIUS...

The same friends have been using Free RADIUS as well for a while now and have had problems with duplicate accounting records coming through. The problem seems to be that RADIUS ships through duplicates (everything the same, except for a small difference like the session-end times being a few seconds apart). Apparently each of these accounting records also comes with a unique sessionID field, and these duplicate entries will both have the same sessonID. The simplest way to deal with this problem would seem to be to put a "unique constraint" on the sessionID field and so all duplicate records would be rejected.
 
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