Using MSN Messenger

P

PurSpyk!!

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Hi

Got my ADSL connection on Friday 05/08/2005, just before the long weekend great.

I have a 10GB account with Axxess. I am a Microsoft Beta Tester so I downloaded the latest Windows (2.42GB).

My wife is now using MSN Messenger to talk to her brother in the UK (using Voice). I have noticed that at the end of the weekend my usage so far is 3.277GB. A few small downloads where made other than the Windows download.

My question, how much data is sent when using Voice with MSN Messenger, she also wants to use a web cam later.

I don't want my account used up in the first few days while I am at work.
 
hi,

Not sure bout MSN Messenger but a program such as skype is AFAIK approx 25-30megs per hour.
i stand to be corrected on that.
 
Text Messaging will be absoloutely minimal.

It's probably the TCP overhead ie. error correction, packet sequencing that accounts for the additional bandwidth.

How much of overhead would account for on a 2.5GB file i wouldn't know.
 
I wouldnt recommend using MSN messanger at the moment. There is a large virus spreading through th emsn messanger service at the moment. My brother and some of his work collegues got hit by it a few days ago, crashed half of their machines at work which were using msn messanger. Total reinstalls were required.
 
Bwaah,

Microsoft Product, Virus ??? Nah, those words dont belong in the same sentence.

;)
 
well seeing as this virus bypassed all of symantecs virus guards and got past antispy ware, i think that even having a guard wouldnt have helped they only released the patch for the virus 2 days after the outbreak, although the liveupdate packages only come out once a week.
 
Symantec's products are getting less effective by the day. We have a number of postfix+amavisd+clam boxes sitting behind symantec antivirus gateways, and they catch virusses by the dozen. Even stuff that are a couple of months old.

I've stopped counting the nuber of times that I've sat down in front of a machine that's behaving "funny," scanned it with Norton (up to date), found nothing, and proceded to find some dodgy process running by just looking at task manager.

Norton is crap, and it's getting worse. Don't buy it, don't renew it, stay away from it.
 
i had the same problem once after i reinstalled winXP. data was constantly being sent and received without any applications running. i was with mweb at the time and they said that somebody could be scanning open ports and stuff. so anyway reinstalled windows, immediately downloaded all the windows updates including sp2, and presto problem sorted. if this only happens in msn though, then using a webcam eats up alot of bandwidth, so that could be the problem

i agree norton is crap and it eats alot of system resources so it slows your system down quite abit as well. im using AVG antivirus and it outperforms norton in almost every area. plus you get free updates for the life of the product, and the product itself is free here just click on the free version. the only addition to the professional version which you have to purchase is that it comes with an additional firewall, although i see no need for it cos the windows xp sp2 firewall seems to work fine
 
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voice + video(webcam) can go as high as 100-150mb a hour, basicly consuming your whole 512k for the whole hour, if available.

Otherwise, you could tweak it to show lower res/framerate and audio quality dampended a bit, but for the full and optimal experience, 100-150mb / hr is highly likely.
 
You could probably d/l a bandwidth monitor application (not sure which one) that could how much data can be sent/received in a sec or a minute.
 
any idea how this virus spreads through MSN? do u like have to accept a file or open a link?
 
Yeah a good bandwidth monitor is called Netlimiter. Put a search in google for it. It give u a complete run down, day to day, month to month, program to program. Check it out.....
 
mas, being alert will actually be enough to prevent you from getting the msn virus. It comes via a message from an unknown "buddy" (who might masquerade as one of your contacts) saying something to the tune of "hey, check out this pic" and then of course it's one of those nasty files with a double extention that windows hides by default.
 
Highflyer, you don't have to be online long before you get port scanned. If you use something like IP-COP and enable intrusion detections, those logs will scare you. (You'll also learn why opening MS SQL on the internet is a very bad idea).

You will also find that if someone port scans you and discovers that you have port 25 open, you can bet your bottom dollar someone will try to relay through it. I've had 68 intrusion rules activated just today, 31 of those MS SQL related...
 
until you find yourself capped on the second day of the month and wonder wtf happened. Then it's useful to be able to check the logs to see where your bandwidth went.
 
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