Vodacom 3G Invoice

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DJTazzz

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Can anyone help or suggest with Vodacom 3G invoices? I have received two invoices in the past two months which seem incredibly high considering I have used the 3G modem for over a year without exceeding my cap by very much.

The first invoice was for April (March Usage) which came in at R1, 200.97, then the following month now May (April Usage) came in at R1, 314.93. My contract fee is R249 for Mymeg500. I know I have had higher usage recently with updates etc but this seem incredibly high.

The only sort of strange thing I noticed was that when working on VPN, the modem seemed to transfer exceedingly high volumes of data even when there was no network activity at the time. Even if I down loaded into Outlook lots of e-mails, this never came in at more than say 20MB in an entire day. Even the VPN portal does not use that much data to maintain. Even while surfing the internet, I saw that on some days it seem to down load huge masses of data which took me over 1GB according to the Vodacom modem software counter so I disconnected and started again and low and behold, it returned back to normal, the counter reducing my usage to what i percieved as normal.

I went to a Vodashop and they down loaded my itemised billing and there were a couple of large items on the bill but it seemed like my usage was really high. They told me that basically, they issued me with a sim and therefore I am responsible for the invoice. Seems a bit cheeky coming from them as I was not disputing the invoice but rather wanted an explanation as to why the invoices were incredibly high considering nothing had really changed since I got the contract.

So, in short, if anyone knows of any bug or technical issue that happens on the Vodacom network, I would be greatly if you could reply.
 
Thanks. I know that. I don't mind paying. Just seems incredibly high considering my usage over the last year. Just seems my little modem transfer lots more data that it should be.
 
VPN could make things tricky. I normally share some stuff on the work network, and had a guy pulling it over my 3G connection one Saturday morning while I was working from home :p

Malware/Spyware could also give a nasty surprise.
 
DJTazzz said:
Can anyone help or suggest with Vodacom 3G invoices? I have received two invoices in the past two months which seem incredibly high considering I have used the 3G modem for over a year without exceeding my cap by very much.

The first invoice was for April (March Usage) which came in at R1, 200.97, then the following month now May (April Usage) came in at R1, 314.93. My contract fee is R249 for Mymeg500. I know I have had higher usage recently with updates etc but this seem incredibly high.

The only sort of strange thing I noticed was that when working on VPN, the modem seemed to transfer exceedingly high volumes of data even when there was no network activity at the time. Even if I down loaded into Outlook lots of e-mails, this never came in at more than say 20MB in an entire day. Even the VPN portal does not use that much data to maintain. Even while surfing the internet, I saw that on some days it seem to down load huge masses of data which took me over 1GB according to the Vodacom modem software counter so I disconnected and started again and low and behold, it returned back to normal, the counter reducing my usage to what i percieved as normal.

I went to a Vodashop and they down loaded my itemised billing and there were a couple of large items on the bill but it seemed like my usage was really high. They told me that basically, they issued me with a sim and therefore I am responsible for the invoice. Seems a bit cheeky coming from them as I was not disputing the invoice but rather wanted an explanation as to why the invoices were incredibly high considering nothing had really changed since I got the contract.

So, in short, if anyone knows of any bug or technical issue that happens on the Vodacom network, I would be greatly if you could reply.
Click to expand...

I think you answered your own question there. Modem activity IS network activity, just not over your Ethernet port.

Something on your PC is eating this data when you connect to the VPN. Maybe a policy-based system IT have running on all their PC's? (I'm assuming a corporate connection). Could be that they do scans or updates of your hardware. Do you see Microsoft's MSM running in your system tray?

If you can, install netlimiter and check which app is doing this.
 
Thanks. I had a look at another posting and they also suggested Net Limiter. This last two months is only the first time I went over, especially by this much. I have been working on VPN for more than a year to so can't say any policy changes have been made.
 
DJTazzz said:
Thanks. I had a look at another posting and they also suggested Net Limiter. This last two months is only the first time I went over, especially by this much. I have been working on VPN for more than a year to so can't say any policy changes have been made.
Click to expand...

Are you connecting to a corporate VPN?

Maybe they implemented a new agent/process/policy in the last two months.

These products typically run in the background and is used to check that the config is 'authorised, updates are applied, etc. Microsoft's MSM is one such product, but there are quite a few.
 
Okay, I did a bit of investigating and am reasonably sure there are no virus's, Trojans etc on this machine.

With regards to Corporate VPN, I think it is but to my knowledge, these policies etc are usually only for the desktop machines so a laptop does not really apply. I am on a corporate domain but get my updates via the usual way by going onto the internet and updating it. The other thing is the setting for automatic updates is not set, it only lets me know if there are updates available. The only other application that likes to check all the time is Norton’s which has done updates but nothing very large. Normally only a couple of MB's.

I have installed the Net Limiter Monitor and also upgraded my contract today but did not see the need until now. Though my work load has increased over this period, it does not involve huge volumes of data, mostly e-mails and connecting to different systems which is what I had done all year until now.
 
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I will watch the usage this month and see. I know sometimes there are network related issues which I use to have with the Virgin/Cell C network when using my phone for the EDGE. It sometimes down loaded large volumes but never like this.
 
DJTazzz said:
Okay, I did a bit of investigating and am reasonably sure there are no virus's, Trojans etc on this machine.

With regards to Corporate VPN, I think it is but to my knowledge, these policies etc are usually only for the desktop machines so a laptop does not really apply. I am on a corporate domain but get my updates via the usual way by going onto the internet and updating it. The other thing is the setting for automatic updates is not set, it only lets me know if there are updates available. The only other application that likes to check all the time is Norton’s which has done updates but nothing very large. Normally only a couple of MB's.

I have installed the Net Limiter Monitor and also upgraded my contract today but did not see the need until now. Though my work load has increased over this period, it does not involve huge volumes of data, mostly e-mails and connecting to different systems which is what I had done all year until now.
Click to expand...

Corporates would not exclude laptops from their IT policies. As a matter of fact, laptops pose a much bigger threat, so more stringent policies tend to apply.
 
Okay, then I could not really know. I am pretty sure; nothing gets downloaded onto the laptop but then could not be sure. I am connected to the client’s domain and work on their wireless network and only access the internet through a gateway but when at home have to dial up via VPN to connect to their systems. In the past, the data usage as mentioned before was never this high and am sure they would not push down that amount of information for policies etc over their networks as it might very well fall over with over 5,000 desktops, never mind the laptops.

I will monitor it this coming month (June) when the upgraded data bundle takes effect. I am not too worried unless my company does not pay but will cross that bridge when I get there.
 
DJTazzz said:
Okay, then I could not really know. I am pretty sure; nothing gets downloaded onto the laptop but then could not be sure. I am connected to the client’s domain and work on their wireless network and only access the internet through a gateway but when at home have to dial up via VPN to connect to their systems. In the past, the data usage as mentioned before was never this high and am sure they would not push down that amount of information for policies etc over their networks as it might very well fall over with over 5,000 desktops, never mind the laptops.

I will monitor it this coming month (June) when the upgraded data bundle takes effect. I am not too worried unless my company does not pay but will cross that bridge when I get there.
Click to expand...

Cool, keep us posted. :)
 
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