Broadband Usage

[drj]

I struggle to get up anywhere close to my 10GB cap here - last month I think was the most at around 4.5GB (excluding free usage) - that's including extensive web browsing most evenings but very little video.

[Anotherone]

Similar to drj for me.
Ha, lot's of graphics on eBay and you have to keep typing stuff in as well  ;)
Ok, being slightly more serious, there's no particular reason why you should see any more traffic on your PN connection, but just worth checking have you used any P2P clients at all? If you are not using stuff like that, or make sure it is fully disabled if you had, but no longer wish to so.
You could check and set the following -
Turn on Safe Surf here
Set the Plusnet Broadband Firewall to Low if you don't use those ports. As you can see, there are other options, depending on your needs. Low is perfectly good enough for normal usage, not given me any issues that I know of.
Both of those are within Connection settings in My Account so login is required.
HTH.

[WWWombat]

Quote from: ossettbob

I think nearly 12Mb usage when not using any programmes or doing any browsing is ridiculous !!.

Remember that the usage figures can be up to 2 hours behind, so you should expect *some* usage to appear a while after you finish.
Networx (as linked previously) really is very useful - it will give you an hour-by-hour display of usage, or daily, weekly & monthly summaries. It will also co-ordinate between copies running on different machines, and track different users independently. That will allow you to not only confirm PN's total, but also perform better hour-by-hour tracking.
What is your package allowance?

[ossettbob]

My package allowance is 10Gb per month. As I never went over 7 Gb per month with Talktalk I thought this would be plenty. I might try browsing etc. as I did with TalkTalk and see what happens to my usage.

[WWWombat]

I recall some people being stung on usage by a toolbar added to their browser. You don't have anything like that, do you?

[spraxyt]

Good point. Link checker (part of AVG security) if I remember correctly used to soak up a fair amount of bandwidth checking for dodgy links on each page.

[jelv]

The browser speed up Fasterfox had a similar 'waste your bandwidth' option which preloaded the linked pages.

[WWWombat]

That's a good point - almost any security package would have some usage associated with it.
And that made me think... it is plausible that there was some usage that wasn't being counted by TT, but is now being counted by Plusnet.
For example, if TT offered a particular anti-virus package as part of the service, it could be that they didn't count usage towards that manufacturer's website. Now the PC is on Plusnet, perhaps it is being counted.
It could be a security product, or anti-virus, or a plug-in/toolbar on the browser. Anything like that?

[Anotherone]

I'm using AVG Free 2013, not having any issues with usage (that I've noticed  ??? )

[ossettbob]

I don`t have any toolbars. Also, my virus protection is Trend Micro. It does do small updates in Kb`s not Mb`s. I have altered my browsing habit. I play guitar and I used to download lots of music files and also use youtube a lot. I am not doing this now and have reduced my usage. Another thing I`m going to do is stop logging in to Plusnet and forums as much as they seem to use a lot. i`ll keep a check on it. However, it seems I`m not the only one who has noticed the increase in usage since moving to Plusnet

[Anotherone]

It's all this posting on Forum's Bob  ;D  ;D
You' d really have to read a lot of posts and post a lot and even then usage might be around 100MB per day, not a lot out of 10GB. I know, only switch on on Bank Holidays and Sundays, that'll cut down the usage  :-X

[ossettbob]

Sorry about making another post about this. I have just looked at my usage. In the 6 days up to Thursday I used an average of 194.32 Mb per day. On Thursday, I didn`t do anything different. In fact, I think I did less,  but my usage was 982.62 Mb !!!!!. How can this be ?

[Oldjim]

So have you installed Networx as suggested earlier

[ossettbob]

Nope. I don`t want to pay for a programme to check my usage !

[Oldjim]

It's free if you had bothered looking http://www.softperfect.com/products/networx/