The Great Conspiracy Theorist....
Just jumping on my conspiracy horse and riding off across the Desert of rumour and discontent.
Our Broadband usage has been going up. BUT I don't actually think we've been using it much more than usual. So my great theory is that - as we're on the cheapest tariff of old that doesn't exist any more - that little Plusnet Pixies are coming out and adding extra Bytes to our total when we're not looking! This of course is simply to drive us onto the next tariff up when it comes to the end of our contract in January approximately.
Can't do it I'm afraid. Strict budget here. So unless we're offered unlimited for the same price? .......... Well.
Funny really. Plusnet are the first ISP we came up against that is strict about limits. Virgin didn't seem to bother at all, Post Office did - but we had no idea what the limit was because they never told us, nor posted details of it on their utterly useless user interface.
Anyway. It's all irrelevant really, but I feel better for writing it down. It's a damned good conspiracy theory and I'm sticking with it! Please ignore.
Best wishes all!
Incidentally, I've mentioned before about the good old days of Dial up and how after just two years with BT Internet in the Stone Age of the service - they knocked a whole £2.50 a month off the account - simply for being a loyal customer! Hell, they probably do nothing like as much now. £2.50 even today would be impressive mind!
Our Broadband usage has been going up. BUT I don't actually think we've been using it much more than usual. So my great theory is that - as we're on the cheapest tariff of old that doesn't exist any more - that little Plusnet Pixies are coming out and adding extra Bytes to our total when we're not looking! This of course is simply to drive us onto the next tariff up when it comes to the end of our contract in January approximately.
Can't do it I'm afraid. Strict budget here. So unless we're offered unlimited for the same price? .......... Well.
Funny really. Plusnet are the first ISP we came up against that is strict about limits. Virgin didn't seem to bother at all, Post Office did - but we had no idea what the limit was because they never told us, nor posted details of it on their utterly useless user interface.
Anyway. It's all irrelevant really, but I feel better for writing it down. It's a damned good conspiracy theory and I'm sticking with it! Please ignore.
Best wishes all!
Incidentally, I've mentioned before about the good old days of Dial up and how after just two years with BT Internet in the Stone Age of the service - they knocked a whole £2.50 a month off the account - simply for being a loyal customer! Hell, they probably do nothing like as much now. £2.50 even today would be impressive mind!
If you give me your IP address, I'll max out your usage in a few hours 
As above though, it can be a number of things and one of the problems with the internet is that as it gets faster and more "unlimited" the games / software / video all take advantage of this and utilise extra bandwidth for better (or not) content delivery and updates.
Do you remember the days when you could install Windows and Microsoft Office on a 486 PC with 4Mb of Ram and it would run perfectly without a problem ? I was looking at my memory usage the other day and Internet Explorer on its own was consuming 420Mb for an idle page - that is three times the total storage I had on my first hard drive !
Then there are the "hackers" - they love trying to find a way into your network and bounce many bytes of information off your router in their attempts to get in. Windows Update is another culprit downloading updates in the background.
One customer had a recent issue with an Apple product - it kept trying to sync data when his machine was turned on but failed so tried to do it the next time, and the next time etc etc. I vaguely remember the bandwidth consumption was something like 3GB each time. Another customer did a Windows 8 to 8.1 update and was quite shocked to find nearly 4Gb of data used up.
Personally I have a stroppy teenager who can quite happily eat 7Gb of Youtube video on his phone *each day* !
Have you double checked your wireless is secure and you don't have anyone "borrowing" any of your data ?
As above though, it can be a number of things and one of the problems with the internet is that as it gets faster and more "unlimited" the games / software / video all take advantage of this and utilise extra bandwidth for better (or not) content delivery and updates.
Do you remember the days when you could install Windows and Microsoft Office on a 486 PC with 4Mb of Ram and it would run perfectly without a problem ? I was looking at my memory usage the other day and Internet Explorer on its own was consuming 420Mb for an idle page - that is three times the total storage I had on my first hard drive !
Then there are the "hackers" - they love trying to find a way into your network and bounce many bytes of information off your router in their attempts to get in. Windows Update is another culprit downloading updates in the background.
One customer had a recent issue with an Apple product - it kept trying to sync data when his machine was turned on but failed so tried to do it the next time, and the next time etc etc. I vaguely remember the bandwidth consumption was something like 3GB each time. Another customer did a Windows 8 to 8.1 update and was quite shocked to find nearly 4Gb of data used up.
Personally I have a stroppy teenager who can quite happily eat 7Gb of Youtube video on his phone *each day* !
Have you double checked your wireless is secure and you don't have anyone "borrowing" any of your data ?
Thanks for entering into the spirit folks! Yes, I remember how easy some stuff used to be to download even on dial up!
You do wonder where it will all end up? Will there always be a breakthrough in information "compression" around the corner just as it looks like the whole Internet will seize up?
I did mean to check out what channel I was on and run a few extra security checks "Just in case." the other day. I do agree though that information is just getting "bigger". Where we could do the same stuff on around 150-200MB per day - looking through our usage, 300MB seems to be the norm!
Yes, I remember how easy some stuff used to be to download even on dial up!You do wonder where it will all end up? Will there always be a breakthrough in information "compression" around the corner just as it looks like the whole Internet will seize up?
I did mean to check out what channel I was on and run a few extra security checks "Just in case." the other day. I do agree though that information is just getting "bigger". Where we could do the same stuff on around 150-200MB per day - looking through our usage, 300MB seems to be the norm!
Ah -reminisences - my first "PC" ? - one MB RAM and 40MB hard drive -had to double the RAM to allow my kids to play an early version of Prince of Persia which we loaded from 5 of the old 5.25" floppies!!
First modem ran at 14,400....bits per second! You could actually watch some pages appearing almost line by line!!
And now ?? Virtually every page is all singing and dancing...and some still take ages to update ...even at 16 megabits per second!!
First modem ran at 14,400....bits per second! You could actually watch some pages appearing almost line by line!!
And now ?? Virtually every page is all singing and dancing...and some still take ages to update ...even at 16 megabits per second!!
I used to sell 8086 PC's and acoustically coupled 300 baud modems (in fact I go back to the TRS-80 days)
Back on topic though, have a look in bit of the 582n menu that shows your devices (mine is here: http://192.168.1.254/cgi/b/devs/ov/?be=0&l0=4&l1=0 )
See what machines have been on and listed - if you don't recognise one, take the first three pairs of digits from the MAC address and pop them in Google or a "Mac to manufacturer" webpage and see what manufacturer they could belong to.
To be honest with you, expecting to use 200Mb and using 300Mb doesn't sound like someone is piggybacking your connection (although possible) - often when this happens they do a hit and run and grab as much data as they can before vanishing.
Back on topic though, have a look in bit of the 582n menu that shows your devices (mine is here: http://192.168.1.254/cgi/b/devs/ov/?be=0&l0=4&l1=0 )
See what machines have been on and listed - if you don't recognise one, take the first three pairs of digits from the MAC address and pop them in Google or a "Mac to manufacturer" webpage and see what manufacturer they could belong to.
To be honest with you, expecting to use 200Mb and using 300Mb doesn't sound like someone is piggybacking your connection (although possible) - often when this happens they do a hit and run and grab as much data as they can before vanishing.
For Windows PCs I suggest you install http://www.softperfect.com/products/networx/ to monitor usage (free download at the bottom the page).
Hi Ado16,
I can assure you that we aren't in the process of upping people's usage in a bid to move them to a new product. As a few people have mentioned, this sounds very much like you're seeing the effects of data getting bigger while your usage remains level. If we wanted to shift people onto the newer product sets we would likely follow the same path we have in the past where the old product is simply retired with an option to move to one of the newer product sets with a special offer.
As mentioned by DomS, it doesn't sound like someone accessing and using your wireless network without your authorisation unless they are a very reserved hacker who just wants to send the odd email and check the lottery results
Best course of action would be to monitor the usage on the devices you have connected (most either have this feature or software can be installed to monitor it) and then see if the amounts line up with your VMBU billing month. Alternatively a good check on the connected devices as mentioned previously would be worth looking into.
I can assure you that we aren't in the process of upping people's usage in a bid to move them to a new product. As a few people have mentioned, this sounds very much like you're seeing the effects of data getting bigger while your usage remains level. If we wanted to shift people onto the newer product sets we would likely follow the same path we have in the past where the old product is simply retired with an option to move to one of the newer product sets with a special offer.
As mentioned by DomS, it doesn't sound like someone accessing and using your wireless network without your authorisation unless they are a very reserved hacker who just wants to send the odd email and check the lottery results
Best course of action would be to monitor the usage on the devices you have connected (most either have this feature or software can be installed to monitor it) and then see if the amounts line up with your VMBU billing month. Alternatively a good check on the connected devices as mentioned previously would be worth looking into.
Jim is correct in saying that the basic charge hasn't changed. What did change was that a surcharge was added for those not also using Plusnet for their phone.