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I''m currently using an ISP that has a bandwidth cap of 175 GB / fiscal month.
I have been exceeding the cap and haven't been doing anything that bandwidth intensive so I got suspicious and downloaded a piece of software to assist me in monitoring bandwidth it's called 'Net Meter' (this was just a few minute ago).
I closed all programs in the task manager via the process tab that use bandwidth and Net Meter was still telling me that I was using upto 1 MB down/500KB UP almost every other minute.
Over the course of 3:00 minutes I had used about 5 MB down and 1 MB up with absolutely no programs running that use bandwidth.
Is this normal? Am I overreacting ? Could this be spyware/other malicious software?
I'm looking for isight/suggestions to help figure out what's wrong.
Thank you in advance.
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spyware could be using your bandwidth however its unlikely because it would probably use a lot more than it currently is. it could also be the programs your running as they will phone home (windows for example) to check updates etc.
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just to get the obvious out of the way, you are using a firewall with password for your network right?
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Do you use a wireless router?
If so, is it properly secured?
Do you share it with anybody?
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I'm not sure if malware would necessarily be transferring that much or little data over the network, but that seems plausible to me.
edit: if your network monitoring is on your own computer, it should be monitoring traffic in and out of the network interface. You wouldn't pick up somebody else using your network.
You should try confirming the traffic with a packet sniffer like Wireshark:
http://www.wireshark.org/download.html
That can also let you investigate where all that traffic is heading towards, and maybe what kind of information is in there.
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A quick scan with http://www.idealsoftware.nl/MBAM/ can never hurt 
Also people talking about the wireless router. He was monitoring it locally and you shouldn't have any network activity besides communication with the router/other computers in the network.
However, you should check if you have anything shared with other people in your network. They might be streaming something from/to your pc and that might be the activity you see.
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On July 28 2011 05:13 EZjijy wrote:
Do you use a wireless router?
If so, is it properly secured?
Do you share it with anybody?
I have a wireless router. Wiereless is off. I am sure of this.
On July 28 2011 05:12 striderxxx wrote:
just to get the obvious out of the way, you are using a firewall with password for your network right?
Yes, Username & password have been changed from their default too
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On July 28 2011 05:16 Myrmidon wrote:I'm not sure if malware would necessarily be transferring that much or little data over the network, but that seems plausible to me. edit: if your network monitoring is on your own computer, it should be monitoring traffic in and out of the network interface. You wouldn't pick up somebody else using your network. You should try confirming the traffic with a packet sniffer like Wireshark: http://www.wireshark.org/download.htmlThat can also let you investigate where all that traffic is heading towards, and maybe what kind of information is in there.
Thanks for the link, I'll look into this.
Additional information: It's a cabel modem. You guys think it's just a safe assumption that it's just checking traffic/doing things to make sure the network's working and in reality I really am using 175 GB/month ?
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It's probable. Small transfers could very well be various systems phoning home, checking for updates, or whatever.
However, if you want to *know* then sniff the packets as detailed above. Figure out what that traffic is, or at least where it's going.
Personally I use 150-200 GB a month. Steam, youtube and watching streams all eat bandwidth.
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Ugh I feel sorry for people with bandwidth caps, that is just cheap ass move by the telecom companies seeing as like 60-70% of their customer base will be joe blow and grandma jane who use up like 1% of their cap
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On July 28 2011 06:37 gosuMalicE wrote:
Ugh I feel sorry for people with bandwidth caps, that is just cheap ass move by the telecom companies seeing as like 60-70% of their customer base will be joe blow and grandma jane who use up like 1% of their cap
Yea, it's a pretty rediculous rip off, however it's difficult to fight it because as you said most average people wouldn't break the cap, hell most average people are too stupid to understand why they're getting charged more than normal and just don't even care.
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On July 28 2011 06:46 Scrubington wrote:Show nested quote +On July 28 2011 06:37 gosuMalicE wrote:
Ugh I feel sorry for people with bandwidth caps, that is just cheap ass move by the telecom companies seeing as like 60-70% of their customer base will be joe blow and grandma jane who use up like 1% of their cap Yea, it's a pretty rediculous rip off, however it's difficult to fight it because as you said most average people wouldn't break the cap, hell most average people are too stupid to understand why they're getting charged more than normal and just don't even care.
The only way to fight it is to switch the ISP. If you can't, well, blame your government for not protecting customers.
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I'm assuming you mean Mb in the OP and not MB (8x the amount), because that would be insane, especially for Canadian internet.
There's no way programs checking for updates and all that background jazz would use nearly that amount. If no one else is using your network and you are actually sure that much bandwidth is being used constantly then some malicious is probably going on. Windows has it's own network monitoring graph if you Ctrl + Alt + Del > Task manager > Networking tab. Check there too.
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On July 28 2011 08:47 Grobyc wrote:
I'm assuming you mean Mb in the OP and not MB (8x the amount), because that would be insane, especially for Canadian internet.
There's no way programs checking for updates and all that background jazz would use nearly that amount. If no one else is using your network and you are actually sure that much bandwidth is being used constantly then some malicious is probably going on. Windows has it's own network monitoring graph if you Ctrl + Alt + Del > Task manager > Networking tab. Check there too.
I did mean Mega Bytes and not bits in the OP. That's why I'm concerned. I ran Ad-Aware and it didn't detect anything except for key generators that I torrented.
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On July 28 2011 09:00 Scrubington wrote:Show nested quote +On July 28 2011 08:47 Grobyc wrote:
I'm assuming you mean Mb in the OP and not MB (8x the amount), because that would be insane, especially for Canadian internet.
There's no way programs checking for updates and all that background jazz would use nearly that amount. If no one else is using your network and you are actually sure that much bandwidth is being used constantly then some malicious is probably going on. Windows has it's own network monitoring graph if you Ctrl + Alt + Del > Task manager > Networking tab. Check there too. I did mean Mega Bytes and not bits in the OP. That's why I'm concerned. I ran Ad-Aware and it didn't detect anything except for key generators that I torrented.
that's probably the cause, a lot of keygens have nasty stuff in them. Especially if they're for products like Office/Photoshop etc.
Either use a packet sniffer to find the exact cause/where things are going so you can research what is hitting you, or do a clean install of windows. Your choice.
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Yeah you really need to find out where all that bandwidth is going then. Use wireshark as Myrmidon suggested and see what's up. That's an insane amount of traffic.
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If you dont run a firewall yet, get comodo free firewall. Comodo firewall can monitor internet traffic and you can cancel specific connections with one click(It allso shows how much is transferred per connection/port/program).
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On July 28 2011 09:43 Madoga wrote:
If you dont run a firewall yet, get comodo free firewall. Comodo firewall can monitor internet traffic and you can cancel specific connections with one click(It allso shows how much is transferred per connection/port/program).
thanks for the suggestion, I'll be sure to get it.
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do u have a program called pando media booster installed?
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On July 28 2011 10:11 facemelterr wrote:
do u have a program called pando media booster installed?
No
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Just for update purposes, I've installed COMODO Firewall and it looks like there isn't any malware/suspicous process running that takes up bandwidth. Skype apparently uses up a TON of bandwidth, other than that I don't know. I'm still using 5 GB-6GB a day, any suggestions on how to cut down on bandwidth usage?
Programs I NEED to run on a daily basis are; Firefox, Skype, and Starcraft II.
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EPT
