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High data usage with nothing connected

Thrall
Seasoned Pro
Posts: 568
Thanks: 112
Fixes: 23
Registered: ‎28-09-2020

Re: High data usage with nothing connected

It’s more likely the spam filter is automated and if you ask a mod nicely they may release the post. Try requesting it through post options > report to moderator Smiley

Robz
Grafter
Posts: 33
Thanks: 8
Registered: ‎21-01-2019

Re: High data usage with nothing connected

@Thrall thank you - yes I guessed it might also be an accidental flag as abuse click - but it still hurts to have a well considered follow up message just gone like that with no back-up. Guess I should have copied to clipboard. Heaven only knows why it was seen as spam - I guess every post needs an @ except the OP. Such a shame I would really like an answer to the mystery - having spent over a month refining an app to log router traffic usage - which has now produced interesting evidence for me this morning as shown in the deleted post - soon to be recovered I hope. I have probably burned my bridges (or britches) now anyway 😄

 

Oh - look the post has been restored as I write - it starts with "The saga continues...." about 2 or 3 posts back . . .

Thank you moderator 😃

dvorak
Moderator
Moderator
Posts: 29,473
Thanks: 6,623
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Registered: ‎11-01-2008

Re: High data usage with nothing connected


Moderators Note


Post released from the automated spam filter

Customer / Moderator
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If it fixed it click 'This fixed my problem'
summers
Aspiring Pro
Posts: 275
Thanks: 50
Fixes: 1
Registered: ‎01-06-2014

Re: High data usage with nothing connected

Do you know which interface you are monitoring? E.g. from my (tp-link) router:

root@DavidSummers:~# ip a
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN qlen 1000
2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UP qlen 1000
3: sit0@NONE: <NOARP> mtu 1480 qdisc noop state DOWN qlen 1000
5: br-lan: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UP qlen 1000
6: eth0.1@eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue master br-lan state UP qlen 1000
7: wlan0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue master br-lan state UP qlen 1000
220: pppoa-wan: <POINTOPOINT,MULTICAST,NOARP,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UNKNOWN qlen 3
221: 6to4-wan6@NONE: <NOARP,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1280 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN qlen 1000

Now of those only ppoa-wan and 6to4-wan6 are internet. lo is so the router can refer to itself. It has a shed load of ethernet ports, that sit under br-lan; and wifi. Now looking at my usage, and you would see a HUGE peak at something like 2am. What happens is my desktop backs up its data every day (via wifi) to my NAS (connected to router ethernet) - this is data going through the router, but it doesn't go onto the WAN.

So do think if anything like that could be happening ....

Robz
Grafter
Posts: 33
Thanks: 8
Registered: ‎21-01-2019

Re: High data usage with nothing connected

@summers brilliant reply, thank you for taking the trouble.

yes I defo know which interface I am using. it is the INTERNET/WAN interface.

it is NOT the local interface and it is not the loopback interface.

how do I know?

Well, looking at this telnet log snippet....

{admin}=>ip iflist
Interface                            Group  MTU   RX         TX         Admin  Oper
1   loop. . . . . . . . . . . . . .  local  4096  107 MB     58 MB      UP     [UP]   
2   Internet. . . . . . . . . . . .  wan    1500  8631 MB    404 MB     UP     UP     
3   LocalNetwork. . . . . . . . . .  lan    1500  460 MB     8670 MB    UP     [UP]   
{admin}=>

I am extracting the substrings for interface 2 at the positions where you see the 8631 MB (rx) and 404 MB (tx) then totalling them. the other values are ignored. And yes careful attention is paid to the units which can be KB MB or GB and the number of characters in the numeric string etc.

So yes good answer - if I were looking at the loop interface there would be more MB indeed, but I ignore that and the local lan interface values are ignored too.