n00b Woes...

[Y2K]

Hey everyone!

I seem to be having a problem with my ADSL cap. I have ADSL 1024 & a 3GB account from Telkom.

Lately I've noticed that my cap lasts me a day or two if I am lucky. For April, I'm sitting on 2.3GB & ALL I've done is check emails. I dont play any games nor do I download stuff via p2p.

Am I right to assume that theres something DEFINATELY wrong with my account & line?

I'd also like to know if someone can please tell me what hard capped, soft capped & shaped capped mean?

At the moment I have the horrible Telkom USB Modem. Should I change this & if so, to what?

Could someone tell me how do I know if I have a router or not?

Thanks!

 

[supersunbird]

First off all, check for spyware (google spybot and adaware and MS defender and download update and run scans).

Run a thorough virus scan with updated definitions. Might have a mail sending virus.

Someone else may be using your account, phone your ISP and get another password ASAP.

Do you have a sibling or child that could have installed a p2p and hidden it?

One or none of these might be the problem, but they are first things that came to my mind.

What is your usage so far, ingoing and outgoing?

 

[Y2K]

First off all, check for spyware (google spybot and adaware and MS defender and download update and run scans).

Run a thorough virus scan with updated definitions. Might have a mail sending virus.

Someone else may be using your account, phone your ISP and get another password ASAP.

Do you have a sibling or child that could have installed a p2p and hidden it?

One or none of these might be the problem, but they are first things that came to my mind.

What is your usage so far, ingoing and outgoing?

Howzit! Thanks for the reply... I ran a Spybot Scan, Adaware scan, AVG & Nortons scan & all thankfully came up clear.

I phoned Telkom & requested a new password for my account & was told that I cant change the password.

Nope no Siblings, just myself & my mom. And know other Windows accounts or p2p stuff.

As for useage, heres my alleged useage for April:

Weekly Graph for 1/4/2006
Downloaded : 1.1975 GB for the week
Uploaded : 1014.8016 MB for the week
Total bandwidth used : 2.1885 GB for the week
Total usage for April : 2.1885 GB

What troubles me is that there is NO way I could have done 1.1975 Downloaded for the week, as we only used the comp on Sunday morning.

Cheers!

 

[IanC]

Lately I've noticed that my cap lasts me a day or two if I am lucky. For April, I'm sitting on 2.3GB & ALL I've done is check emails. I dont play any games nor do I download stuff via p2p.

You might want to check your usage here:
http://adsl.telkomsa.net/
and also check your usage and logon history here:
http://userstats.adsl.saix.net/
You may also want to check out the following link on hellopeter.com:
http://www.hellopeter.com/details.asp?id=45863

Edit: Btw you can change your own account password here:
https://online.telkomsa.net/pmt/index.html

 

[Y2K]

You might want to check your usage here:
http://adsl.telkomsa.net/
and also check your usage and logon history here:
http://userstats.adsl.saix.net/
You may also want to check out the following link on hellopeter.com:
http://www.hellopeter.com/details.asp?id=45863

Edit: Btw you can change your own account password here:
https://online.telkomsa.net/pmt/index.html

Sweet thanks for the links! I had the first one. Second one doesnt seem to work for me.

The hellopeter one is proving to be a great help.

I had NO idea you could change your Telkom password. I've asked Telkom over 10 times about it & always received a NO.

Anyway thanks so much for your help!

 

[IanC]

Second one doesnt seem to work for me.

Hmmm, it should work, when you login try:

Username: online<x>@dsl.<y>gbsh.telkomsa.net

where x=your 6 digit username number & y=in your case 3​

Password: your DSL password

I had NO idea you could change your Telkom password. I've asked Telkom over 10 times about it & always received a NO.

That's Telkom ... helpful to the last

 

[Y2K]

Can someone give me a rough idea as to what kind of recourse action I have please? I've complained to Telkom about the problem, but they insist that I must have used it.

Can please tell me what hard capped, soft capped & shaped capped mean?

At the moment I have the horrible Telkom USB Modem. Should I change this & if so, to what? I've been reading about a Breytek modem...

Could someone tell me how do I know if I have a router or not please?

Thanks!

 

[supersunbird]

Good morning, from looking at your stats, well something is weird, the sending bit is WAY high, normal would be only 10 to 40% of total usage.

Hard capped means, when you are over the the allocated usage amount (3GB in your case) then you can do nothing more on the internet, not surf local or overseas sites, or even recieve e-mail.

Soft capped means thats even if you are over the cap, you can still get your e-mails, and browse locally hosted sites (a .co.za site can be hosted overseas, so those woudl not work after soft capping) but no international sites.

Shapped means a shaped account, Telkom shapes the
traffic on their network, giving priority to HTML and e-mail traffic, while throttling back the speeds at which VoIP/p2p/lots-of-other-things traffic goes trhouhg on their network.

A router (most of which normally have a ADSL modem built in) is a small box that normally has a telephone wire connector, and 4 to 5 network connectors. Its actually a computer and you can tell it connect to a ADSL account on its own, whenever a PC on the the network requests it or even to stay online all the time, or you can put it on bridge mode, and then its very similar to using your USB modem but on every PC.

 

[killadoob]

why do you have 1024 adsl when yopu only got a 3 gig cap?

 

[schitz011]

I had a similar problem when I first got my ADSL installed.

As i work out of an office and use a laptop I had my laptop at home the first weekend, but left my router switched on in the office. Over that weekend it used 100MB of data by itself. Since then I have found that the best way to stop unexpected bandwidth useage is to switch the router/modem off when not using it. It takes all of 10 seconds to get synched up and even if it's only 50MB of traffic you save that's still saving your precious bandwidth..

There are all sorts of things that can suck bandwidth - Winxp updating, all sorts of software these days will update automatically, virus and adware software getting definitions.. All this can add up to serious bandwidth suckage.. Check all your software to see if it's doing automatic updates and things of that nature...

 

[burst]

A girl at work had the same symptoms. It seems she got a mail bomb. It sent 1000 emails with 1 Mb attachements each to a person on her mailing list. We still don't know how it happened. But it only happened once. We ran all kinds of anti-virus programs and malware detectors, which can up with zilch. So maybe ask around if anyonge got a load of mails?

 

[IanC]

from looking at your stats, well something is weird, the sending bit is WAY high, normal would be only 10 to 40% of total usage.

supersunbird is absolutely correct, your stats are very strange indeed and suggest some form of P2P activity. This is why I suggested you go to:

http://userstats.adsl.saix.net/​

since that would give you a record of your logins and would enable you to work out, from the login times, exactly when this was done.

Can someone give me a rough idea as to what kind of recourse action I have please? I've complained to Telkom about the problem, but they insist that I must have used it.

From what I've been able to ascertain from various sources, hellopeter.com being about the best:

• Telkom knows who logged onto your account (and at what times) and will only pass this information on to the police.
• You would have to lay a charge at a police station ... theft (of bandwidth).
• Telephone Telkom and give them the case number, thereafter they work with the police.

Your chances of getting anything beyond this done e.g. getting your bandwidth quota reset, appear to be minimal.

 

[IanC]

Could someone tell me how do I know if I have a router or not please?

The technical explanation: A router is a networking device that forwards data packets across an internetwork. A router makes routing decisions based on rules that operate at layer 3 (the Network layer, or if you don't mind a bit of "making something fit" ... the IP layer) of the OSI seven-layer model.

It is most likely that your Telkom-supplied USB ADSL modem is a router, especially if you're using it (as I think you are) to establish a PPPoE connection to your ISP.

 

[Y2K]

Good morning, from looking at your stats, well something is weird, the sending bit is WAY high, normal would be only 10 to 40% of total usage.

Hard capped means, when you are over the the allocated usage amount (3GB in your case) then you can do nothing more on the internet, not surf local or overseas sites, or even recieve e-mail.

Soft capped means thats even if you are over the cap, you can still get your e-mails, and browse locally hosted sites (a .co.za site can be hosted overseas, so those woudl not work after soft capping) but no international sites.

Shapped means a shaped account, Telkom shapes the
traffic on their network, giving priority to HTML and e-mail traffic, while throttling back the speeds at which VoIP/p2p/lots-of-other-things traffic goes trhouhg on their network.

A router (most of which normally have a ADSL modem built in) is a small box that normally has a telephone wire connector, and 4 to 5 network connectors. Its actually a computer and you can tell it connect to a ADSL account on its own, whenever a PC on the the network requests it or even to stay online all the time, or you can put it on bridge mode, and then its very similar to using your USB modem but on every PC.

A very good morning to you too!

Thank you SO much for clearing up my cap issue & router question.

Just a quick question reguarding my router. Would my router be my actual modem or a "box" thats connected to my phone line jack?

I'm just trying to identify WHERE exactly my router is at home...

 

[Y2K]

why do you have 1024 adsl when yopu only got a 3 gig cap?

We used to have a normal 56k account with Mweb, but it was horribly slow.

That prompted my mom to get an ADSL account. Not sure why my mom went with a 1024 one nor did I know there were any other line options available for ADSL till now.

In November & December last year we had the very same problem where our cap for the month would finish in 1-2 days. Which left us pretty confused as I'm usually at university & my mom doesn't know how to do anything else but check her emails.

When we spoke to Telkom about it we were just told to get two extra 3GB additional caps which we did. In January this year we decided to cancel the accounts since we hardly used them.

When we tried cancelling them, every month our account would show the additional caps as STILL being there. So on 31 March I decided to phone Telkom again. I ended up speaking to someone who told me that our ID number for the account was mixed up so the account therefore was not being cancelled.

At the moment I'm waiting to be credited on that. Well I hope to be.

 

[Y2K]

I had a similar problem when I first got my ADSL installed.

As i work out of an office and use a laptop I had my laptop at home the first weekend, but left my router switched on in the office. Over that weekend it used 100MB of data by itself. Since then I have found that the best way to stop unexpected bandwidth useage is to switch the router/modem off when not using it. It takes all of 10 seconds to get synched up and even if it's only 50MB of traffic you save that's still saving your precious bandwidth..

There are all sorts of things that can suck bandwidth - Winxp updating, all sorts of software these days will update automatically, virus and adware software getting definitions.. All this can add up to serious bandwidth suckage.. Check all your software to see if it's doing automatic updates and things of that nature...

Umm as far as I can tell the only things that do updates on my PC are Nortons, AVG, Spybot Search & Destroy, Adaware, Windows Updates & my Windows Media Player.

A friend of mine has told me about a program called Hijack This, which apparently lets me see if anyone or malicious programs are installed on my PC. I'm going to give that a try.

 

[Y2K]

A girl at work had the same symptoms. It seems she got a mail bomb. It sent 1000 emails with 1 Mb attachements each to a person on her mailing list. We still don't know how it happened. But it only happened once. We ran all kinds of anti-virus programs and malware detectors, which can up with zilch. So maybe ask around if anyonge got a load of mails?

I had that problem with my old Mweb 56k account. I thought of that at first but don't think thats the problem. Between my mom & I we only have 17 people on our contact list....

 

[Y2K]

The technical explanation: A router is a networking device that forwards data packets across an internetwork. A router makes routing decisions based on rules that operate at layer 3 (the Network layer, or if you don't mind a bit of "making something fit" ... the IP layer) of the OSI seven-layer model.

It is most likely that your Telkom-supplied USB ADSL modem is a router, especially if you're using it (as I think you are) to establish a PPPoE connection to your ISP.

Hi again! Thanks so much for all the info. I really appreciate it.

So from what I gather you're saying my Telkom ADSL USB Pots modem is my router?

I do have this white "box" from Telkom along with a filter that connects to my phone line jack, I'm guessing thats NOT my router...

 

[MaD]

Sounds like someone stole your account details mate.. log onto your router and change the default user/pass (if not already done). If you PM me your IP address then I can see if I can get in..

 

[Y2K]

I phoned Telkom today. After a lovely total of 35+ minutes & jumping between 0800 500 200 & 0800 237 500, being told I need additional caps, that I have a 3G line (don't get that one), I've been told that theres some mix up with my moms ID number AGAIN & that I should pop an email of to [email protected].

Once I do that, they'll run a check & if someones been using my account I get credited.

What really pisses me off is that, whilst phoning I've had 2 technicians confide in me & tell me that this is not the first querry they've had for the month let alone before.

I can't get over the total incompetancy of "most" ppl at Telkom!

I'm considering a change of ISP's right now. Someone in another thread mentioned All You Can Eat?

Anyway just wanted to thank everyone for their advice!

Cheers!