MTN uses excessive data from own network.

[Gimli_]

In the past two or three months I occasionally worked on my laptop while tethered to my phone's wifi. I found it strange that I would use a very large amount of data in a relatively short space in time, anything between 500MB to 1Gb withing a few hours, and I was not doing any bandwidth intensive work. I always happens when I do that in Parktown where I sometimes work. Today it happened again and I decided to investigate. I found that there is a constant stream of data to my laptop from access.mtnbusiness.co.za to the tune of about 800kbps. This only happens if I connect from Parktown, not if I connect from Centurion. The attached screenshots show iftop in Ubuntu Linux, which shows the origin and destination of traffic after a clean restart. The first screenshot is in Centurion, the second in Parktown.

This has resulted in me having to buy at least an additional 5Gigs of data in the past two of three months.

I would like the MTN rep to reply on this please.

If anyone ever noticed this, please share your story on this thread.

Thanks

 

[Gimli_]

Insult to injury

To add insult to injury, to day I depleted data on my Axxess data bundle +-300MB (monitoring my usage using iftop on ubuntu). Then I activated a 24 hour data bundle on MTN that I purchased previously. Within 5mins I got a message that I had already used 150MB of data, and that my linespeed will be throttled. This is impossible as I monitor my usage properly on the phone and the laptop. This is a calculation fault by MTN probably confusing data used on Axxess APN with data used on MTN APN.

Any MTN reps on MyBroadband?

Data of my PSD calls below

2015-08-14 10:14:01 mymtn 13.387MB
2015-08-14 10:29:29 mymtn 9KB Activated at 11:50, expired at 11:50 following day
2015-08-26 12:54:18 mymtn 2.503MB
2015-08-26 12:56:22 mymtn 11KB
2015-08-26 12:59:37 mymtn 9.123MB
2015-08-26 13:02:32 mymtn 20KB
2015-08-26 13:08:17 mymtn 20KB Throttled at 13:08 for exceeding 150 MB fair use policy
2015-08-26 13:50:12 mymtn 46.103MB
2015-08-26 13:57:59 mymtn 6KB
2015-08-26 14:17:24 mymtn 14KB
2015-08-26 14:18:11 mymtn 456KB
2015-08-26 14:56:54 mymtn 2KB
2015-08-26 15:35:44 mymtn 318KB
2015-08-26 16:22:56 mymtn 7KB
2015-08-26 16:55:20 mymtn 7KB
2015-08-26 17:12:31 mymtn 1KB
2015-08-26 17:32:07 mymtn 30KB
2015-08-26 17:34:10 mymtn 14KB

 

[Rickster]

Same here.

 

[The_Unbeliever]

What happens if you block access.mtnbusiness.co.za at firewall level, so no traffic can traverse the firewall from/to its IP?

 

[whatwhat]

What process is connecting to that IP? Your machine isn't just going to be sending all your info that address by itself.

 

[Sinbad]

What process is connecting to that IP? Your machine isn't just going to be sending all your info that address by itself.

Netsvcs on the windows box

Peer to peer windows updates?

On the linux box - what process?

NB, that address is an MTN client, not MTN itself.

 

[akescpt]

there is no way they cant be aware of such a big cockup. are they doing it deliberately?

 

[whatwhat]

Netsvcs on the windows box

Peer to peer windows updates?

On the linux box - what process?

NB, that address is an MTN client, not MTN itself.

Netsvcs is normally BITS.

Go to Control Panel,then click on Administrative tools then click on Services then Find Background Transfer Intelligent Service then Right click and go to Properties then Disable the service.

See if it stops. It's related to Windows Updates.

 

[Rickster]

What happens if you block access.mtnbusiness.co.za at firewall level, so no traffic can traverse the firewall from/to its IP?

I blocked 41.181.158.73, and it seems to have stopped, I wonder what it was.

 

[whatwhat]

I blocked 41.181.158.73, and it seems to have stopped, I wonder what it was.

Something on your computer is connecting to that. Either Windows updates, or malware that you have installed. But a PC sitting byself is not going to want to go to some random IP.

Find out what is making the connection.