Cable companies - arrrrggghhh
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Dave Kreskowiak wrote:
When you DVR something, it's actually being recorded "in the cloud", not on your local box.
Is that really true? If so, that's yet another reason to shy away from cloud services. I do NOT want anyone, neither the cable company nor authorities, to have the facilities to monitor which movies I am watching, when I watch them, and how many times I watch them. (It is bad enough with the facilites for tracing which movies I am buying! I prefer to pay for DVDs in cash, over the counter...) I do NOT want to risk that my movies (or music or photos) suddenly becomes inaccessible because someone in the Establishment points out, say, that one of the actors has declared himself as a communist. (I do have a collection of Chaplin movies...) Or that "for the protection of the children", a photo of my baby daughter at the changing table must be removed within 48 hours, or my account will be closed down. I DO want to have full access to my movies, music and photos even if my cable connection experiences an 'excavator error', or the switching center experiences a power down, or if the cloud server is overloaded. If I go on vacation, bringing my portable, I want to have access to music and other entertainment on the trip, even when visiting places where 'cable' is something that carries AC only and the only wireless is the AM radio. Nowadays, the disk costs for storing a movie is in the range of ten US cents - even less if you buy an internal disk for your desktop (rather than an external disk for your portable). That gives you privacy, reliability, independence of the network, stable quality, no risk of loss due to the contents of the movies or photos. No monthly fee - those 10cents/movie is a one-time fee. Is there any real reason for using the cloud storage for anything? I can see a single one: I handle that by keeping a duplicate of my disk(s) at the office, in case my house burns down. So: No cloud service for me!
Might be too late for that... data is collected so universally. Cash might work. I have a recommendation for a Voyager Air. Looks pretty slick.
Charlie Gilley Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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I know some of you have posted from time to time battles with your internet supplier. Mine has gone to the surreal level. Here in the US, the cable companies are pretty much a monopoly. If you want performance, it's the rare location that has a choice of multiple suppliers. In my area it's ATT UVerse (max speed around 30 Mbps, maybe) and Comcast (100+ Mbps and climbing). Against my better judgment and giving in to household members, I switched us to Comcast for the higher speed. Fully aware of the data caps they "measure", I did their estimate and reasonably concluded there was no way we would touch the 300 GB / month cap. Wait for it.... First month came in at nearly 800 GB. No elephanting way. Since I had a three month grace period, I wasn't worried (well into my second month now), but I became more watchful. In the next week, we allegedly used 300GB. Hmmm, might have an issue (I do have some heavy gamers, and one daughter loves YouTube). Made sure there were no bit torrents running, changed the Wi-Fi password, etc. Almost had a stroke talking to their support staff. They tried to explain that if you were streaming movies it would use data (no $hit sherlock). Data continues to hemorrhage. Bought a new router, changed passwords, the flood, according to their meter continues. The problem is that the router tracks the data coming and going on a mac address level. I know who is using what. I see my heavy data users as expected, but nothing to absurd levels - calculating the daily rate, we're averaging 150 GB / month. I installed network monitoring software on all major devices - PCs, laptops, and I'm still looking for something for a chromebook (if you know of any app?). Those numbers track nearly 1:1 with the router. Of course, when I feed this data to Comcast, I get the same automated cut/paste response from their "techs" - change your wifi password, our numbers are correct, blah, blah, blah. There are some s/w packages I can download for a month that will monitor traffic across a lan, I might try one of those. I know my ultimate alternative is to cancel and go back to uverse, but this has sort of pissed me off, so I'm not willing to let it go. Data is data, and you imply I don't know what I'm talking about, then back it up with data. Any ideas from you other techies about tracking data usage like this? Appreciate any suggestions. Let the beating commence :) I have a friend who went away for a 5 day weekend
Charlie Gilley Stuck in
Probably totally unrelated but I had a similar occurrence about a year ago and it turned out to be OneDrive. It had got itself into some sort of updating loop and started eating data voraciously. It chewed a month's limit in a day. It was also a little hard to track down as Windows seemed to hide the data use. None of this explains your router figures but, if you are using OneDrive, try turning sync off and see if things improve.
Paul Hooper If you spend your whole life looking over your shoulder, they will get you from the front instead.
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One way to get attention is to say you will begin legal action. I developed software for a call center here in Canada. As soon as legal action was mentioned, the issue was immediately moved up the chain to people who would listen. Who knows, it might really be a case for legal action.
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend; inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. -- Groucho Marx
Well, so far it's a matter of whose data do you believe? I don't have enough yet in my arsenal to nuke them. But I'm working on it. Besides, it's a good exercise in technical skill development.
Charlie Gilley Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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I have the same provider and have been able to track and manage usage by installing software at the router. I'm using Gargoyle router management software https://www.gargoyle-router.com. If you have a compatible router, I'd suggest trying that. The software not only measures usage, but allows setting of quotas for usage. The usage totals from Gargoyle are within a couple of percent of those from the ISP, as there is some traffic that hits the modem that does not make it to the router (filtered at the modem).
:thumbsup: I've been hesitant to flash my router, but I may do so. No guts, no glory. I just don't want a brick.
Charlie Gilley Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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Why don't you just hit them with consumer complaint and technical literate lawyer? 800 GB per month is a lot. I mean a lot... I've been downloading torrents for since 2007 and I've downloaded a lot... Really a lot. From the same tracker... My bandwidth with the tracker is almost 4 TB. That is for 8 years... Your family/users can be 5-10 people at the same router but 800 gigabytes is really a lot of info to be streamed/downloaded/pulled or whatever.
You've just touched on the infuriating part. I was discussing this with "a" tech. I have no idea what his qualifications were, he's probably just looking at a web site fed by some internal system. I pointed out that we weren't just a little over, but an absurd amount that would make me question the sanity of his #s.
Charlie Gilley Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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Maybe they're using your data for you by making WiFi available to their other customers through your router? An example article about the issue: Comcast Was Sued For Quietly Turning Customers' Home WiFi Into "Public" Hotspots[^]. As I recall from when this broke, they're not supposed to be tagging that data usage onto your bill, but maybe they are. If you can get daily data usage results, unplug everything from their line for a day and see if they're still claiming data usage on your line. If so, then fight, fight, fight, or switch.
We can program with only 1's, but if all you've got are zeros, you've got nothing.
:omg: At what point would you get a sick feeling at this dirty trick? Wow. The good news is that I refused their box and have my own. So I think we're okay there. "unplug" I did this yesterday morning. Usage dropped to zero. Going to start adding stuff back in. No heavy users are in the house. 16 yo returns home from a school outing at 1, the 13 yo youtube fanatic is home at 3. So far, very little usage.
Charlie Gilley Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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:omg: At what point would you get a sick feeling at this dirty trick? Wow. The good news is that I refused their box and have my own. So I think we're okay there. "unplug" I did this yesterday morning. Usage dropped to zero. Going to start adding stuff back in. No heavy users are in the house. 16 yo returns home from a school outing at 1, the 13 yo youtube fanatic is home at 3. So far, very little usage.
Charlie Gilley Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
charlieg wrote:
The good news is that I refused their box and have my own. So I think we're okay there
This is hypothetical since your usage suggests this isn't what's happening, but... maybe, maybe not. Think it through -- how do they set up gobs of routers like that? Not manually, so by script. It'd have to recognize multiple types of routers and probably automatically configure every new router added to their system. How's it going to do that from the public WAN side? Via a hardcoded backdoor or via a backdoor into the cloud management service. You still sure its impossible for them to configure the router hardware you bought? Your best bet may be to do as that article suggests -- disable the WiFi on the router and use a separate access point device that is connected downstream of your router. Still no guarantee that they don't scan your internal network to find and configure it through, but they're probably not that sophisticated yet. If you're worried, load one of the open source router firmware loads onto it. "usage" Maybe one of your kid's computers is infected and being used as a torrent server without their knowledge. Might be worthwhile turning them on one at a time before the kids get home and start using data to see if usage jumps.
We can program with only 1's, but if all you've got are zeros, you've got nothing.
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charlieg wrote:
The good news is that I refused their box and have my own. So I think we're okay there
This is hypothetical since your usage suggests this isn't what's happening, but... maybe, maybe not. Think it through -- how do they set up gobs of routers like that? Not manually, so by script. It'd have to recognize multiple types of routers and probably automatically configure every new router added to their system. How's it going to do that from the public WAN side? Via a hardcoded backdoor or via a backdoor into the cloud management service. You still sure its impossible for them to configure the router hardware you bought? Your best bet may be to do as that article suggests -- disable the WiFi on the router and use a separate access point device that is connected downstream of your router. Still no guarantee that they don't scan your internal network to find and configure it through, but they're probably not that sophisticated yet. If you're worried, load one of the open source router firmware loads onto it. "usage" Maybe one of your kid's computers is infected and being used as a torrent server without their knowledge. Might be worthwhile turning them on one at a time before the kids get home and start using data to see if usage jumps.
We can program with only 1's, but if all you've got are zeros, you've got nothing.
The Comcast supplied boxes have WiFi built in - two antennas, etc, which is how they abuse the system. Mine is a standard surfboard from Motorola, no WiFi at all. usage - dead on. They are trickling back in... we'll see how it goes.
Charlie Gilley Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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Outside users. The router is setup as a secure WIFI. Password has been changed twice in the last two weeks. This weekend, I will restrict access to only MAC addresses I recognize (that's about as tight as you can get). However, I can see the list of MAC addresses accessing my router. There are only 3 that I have no identified. I think one is a roku, another is a phone, and another is a tablet somewhere. But they are not using any data. Agreed on the sampling. Has been started.
Charlie Gilley Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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Not only "might have a point", but "That's it!" Network people ALWAYS count bits, not bytes. They always did. First: Networking standards were established before a byte was fixed to be 8 bits. At least up to 1980, a byte could be anywhere from 5 bits and upwards - 7 was a common size, as was 9. A byte was the space requrired to store a single character. Second: Communication overhead comes is bits (or even half bits, in modem communication). What's interesting to the cable guys is how much they have to carry, whether usable data, check digits, start/stop bits, preamble bits, link layer bit stuffing or whatever. It doesn't matter whether that 36 bit Univac word carries six 5-bit Fieldata characters, five 7-bit ASCII characters or four 9-bit characters. Another thing to remember: Communication guys have ten fingers. Like in 56kbps channels - they are 56,000 bits/sec, not 57,344 (that is 56 * 1024) bits/sec. Or in more modern unit: 1 gpbs is 1,000,000,000 bits/sec, not 1,073,741,824. (So you get 7% less than you expected.) About B/b: Some computer guys (those not working with communication) has tried to establish a convention of B = Byte, b = bit - but without success. Certainly not in communication; those guys do not have any 'byte' concept. They carry bits, period. Besides, the computer guys are not at all consistent themselves: You frequently see the size of a data structure given as, say, 1.5 kb, references to 4kb disk pages etc. The context tells you that these are byte sizes, not bit sizes, whether you use upper or lower case b. A communication context is similar: They are bit sizes, not byte sizes, whether you use upper or lower case b.
Just FYI: On a wire, if you want to send 8 bits, you may need, 8, 9, 10, or 11 bits. It depends on the electrical wiggle that sends a bit. Some wire standards use simple DC levels to signal bits. If you don't have a "start bit" that is always a non-default value, there's no way to tell the difference between a stream of 0's from a disconnected cable, and no way to tell when the next nonzero byte begins. These days there are a million different wire protocols (level 1 for you ISO network model fans). But for reasons that depend on the exact nature of the wire wiggle, you usually send some extra bits with each byte (um, octet) of data. Comparing byte rates among different wire protocols with different goals might cause fistfights at IEEE meetings. Bit rates can't meaningfully be compared either, but they mean something useful to the RF engineers and DSP programmers who build cable boxes, so we're stuck with 'em. You can't just divide the bit rate by 8. Say that at a standards meeting and see how long it takes to restore order.
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Just FYI: On a wire, if you want to send 8 bits, you may need, 8, 9, 10, or 11 bits. It depends on the electrical wiggle that sends a bit. Some wire standards use simple DC levels to signal bits. If you don't have a "start bit" that is always a non-default value, there's no way to tell the difference between a stream of 0's from a disconnected cable, and no way to tell when the next nonzero byte begins. These days there are a million different wire protocols (level 1 for you ISO network model fans). But for reasons that depend on the exact nature of the wire wiggle, you usually send some extra bits with each byte (um, octet) of data. Comparing byte rates among different wire protocols with different goals might cause fistfights at IEEE meetings. Bit rates can't meaningfully be compared either, but they mean something useful to the RF engineers and DSP programmers who build cable boxes, so we're stuck with 'em. You can't just divide the bit rate by 8. Say that at a standards meeting and see how long it takes to restore order.
SeattleC++ wrote:
On a wire, if you want to send 8 bits, you may need, 8, 9, 10, or 11 bits
I would like to see some citations that indicate that protocols on the optic fiber that net work providers are laying in the modern era are using anything but 8 bit protocols.
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It has been my experience that the default settings for a Comcast modem is to have an unsecured WiFi presence called xfinitywifi. If that hole isn't plugged, then you may have traffic that bypasses your router.
Fletcher Glenn
fglenn wrote:
If that hole isn't plugged, then you may have traffic that bypasses your router.
That is in fact a specifically a selling point of xfinity. :cool:http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/12/comcast-sued-by-customers-for-turning-routers-into-public-hotspots/[^]
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Just FYI: On a wire, if you want to send 8 bits, you may need, 8, 9, 10, or 11 bits. It depends on the electrical wiggle that sends a bit. Some wire standards use simple DC levels to signal bits. If you don't have a "start bit" that is always a non-default value, there's no way to tell the difference between a stream of 0's from a disconnected cable, and no way to tell when the next nonzero byte begins. These days there are a million different wire protocols (level 1 for you ISO network model fans). But for reasons that depend on the exact nature of the wire wiggle, you usually send some extra bits with each byte (um, octet) of data. Comparing byte rates among different wire protocols with different goals might cause fistfights at IEEE meetings. Bit rates can't meaningfully be compared either, but they mean something useful to the RF engineers and DSP programmers who build cable boxes, so we're stuck with 'em. You can't just divide the bit rate by 8. Say that at a standards meeting and see how long it takes to restore order.
Are you telling us that you still, in 2015, connect to the internet through a sub-9600bps modem line? Most of us use technologies that requires somewhere between 500 and 1000 bits on the line if you want to transfer only a single octet. First, there is some physical framing (e.g. the preamble, if you are on a bus CSMA/CD net, sync etc. - or, on a modem line, the start/stop-bits that you refer to. Some link protocols (such as HDLC) are 'self-clocking' and do not require any physical framing. ATM has a 40 bit cell header, which may seem a lot for a payload of 384 bits, but considering that it both handles end-to-end routing, multiplexing, out-of-band data, flow control and header checksumming, you get a lot for those 40 bits! If you need it, that is. Then there is a link layer frame: An Ethernet frame, HDLC frame, FR frame or whatever. It could have address fields getting you to the destination, like a MAC address or FR end-to-end address, but that doesn't really matter for IP; it won't trust it any way but provides its own. The number of bits of link layer overhead can vary a lot; for good old HDLC it was a minimum of 40 bits. When Ethernet frames were broadcast on a bus, the disctinction between physical and link framing was rather diffuse; together they filled 304 bits (including the 'intepacket gap' before the next frame). IP has its own header of minimum 160 bits, including the address field of the destination machine (and the source) - but that is the machine only, not the entity within that machine! So we need another header at the Transport layer, usually the TCP header of 128 bits minimum. Now we are at the receiving entity. But to know what that byte is for - whether it is a keystroke, an alarm signal or the eight most significant bits of a 32 bit integer, it is almost without exception wrapped in some sort of application protocol, tagging it one way or the other. And the TCP payload is always padded to a multiple of 32 bits. That's in IPv4. Comes IPv6, and the minimum IP header has grown to 320 bits. Fortunately, the TCP header is roughly the same (checksum calculation is modified), and the link layer and physical layer is independent of the IP version, so that overhead is unchanged. But the header sizes of IP and TCP are minimum sizes; there may be optional fields at both layers. The good thing about this terrible overhead is that if you transmit not one byte, but a thousand bytes, the overhead will probably stay the same, in absolute numbers - and 1/1000 as much in percent o
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Might be too late for that... data is collected so universally. Cash might work. I have a recommendation for a Voyager Air. Looks pretty slick.
Charlie Gilley Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
charlieg wrote:
Might be too late for that... data is collected so universally.
Toll roads give such huge discounts for those that accept being traced (that is, charged to that chip glued to your windshield), and it is so convenient just driving on board that ferry, or whatever. So they do know roughly where my car is at any time - or at least when it last passed a toll station or used a ferry. And they can roughly tell where my mobile is located. But my mobile is a simple GSM phone - no GPS, no smartphone with apps reporting my GPS position continously. I even tend to leave my phone at home when I visit friends, or turn it completely off when I bring it for emergency use (such as on mountain hikes). I do pay in cash whenever possible, and essentially avoid discount cards from chain stores - even if you pay in cash, they make a record of your preferred toothpaste and the amount of beer you buy; I don't want them to file such data about me! I do not have any Facebook or Twitter account (nor was I in Second Life a few years ago) and avoid any discussion fora requesting more than a semi-anonoymous email address. I am right now setting up another computer that I will use for most of my writing and photo/video editing; it will be off net. The old, net connected computer will solely be used for network communication, with no private information on that machine. When I cannot keep my location private, such as when I'm driving on toll roads, I might as well use my plastic card at the gas station; that doesn't reveal more than they already know. My employer can tell that I come to work every day, so I let my GSM tells the same. But I believe that I have managed to reduce my electronic traces to a couple magnitudes less than the typical careless, young person today. Maybe I am paranoid. Still they might be after me...
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fglenn wrote:
If that hole isn't plugged, then you may have traffic that bypasses your router.
That is in fact a specifically a selling point of xfinity. :cool:http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/12/comcast-sued-by-customers-for-turning-routers-into-public-hotspots/[^]
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I know some of you have posted from time to time battles with your internet supplier. Mine has gone to the surreal level. Here in the US, the cable companies are pretty much a monopoly. If you want performance, it's the rare location that has a choice of multiple suppliers. In my area it's ATT UVerse (max speed around 30 Mbps, maybe) and Comcast (100+ Mbps and climbing). Against my better judgment and giving in to household members, I switched us to Comcast for the higher speed. Fully aware of the data caps they "measure", I did their estimate and reasonably concluded there was no way we would touch the 300 GB / month cap. Wait for it.... First month came in at nearly 800 GB. No elephanting way. Since I had a three month grace period, I wasn't worried (well into my second month now), but I became more watchful. In the next week, we allegedly used 300GB. Hmmm, might have an issue (I do have some heavy gamers, and one daughter loves YouTube). Made sure there were no bit torrents running, changed the Wi-Fi password, etc. Almost had a stroke talking to their support staff. They tried to explain that if you were streaming movies it would use data (no $hit sherlock). Data continues to hemorrhage. Bought a new router, changed passwords, the flood, according to their meter continues. The problem is that the router tracks the data coming and going on a mac address level. I know who is using what. I see my heavy data users as expected, but nothing to absurd levels - calculating the daily rate, we're averaging 150 GB / month. I installed network monitoring software on all major devices - PCs, laptops, and I'm still looking for something for a chromebook (if you know of any app?). Those numbers track nearly 1:1 with the router. Of course, when I feed this data to Comcast, I get the same automated cut/paste response from their "techs" - change your wifi password, our numbers are correct, blah, blah, blah. There are some s/w packages I can download for a month that will monitor traffic across a lan, I might try one of those. I know my ultimate alternative is to cancel and go back to uverse, but this has sort of pissed me off, so I'm not willing to let it go. Data is data, and you imply I don't know what I'm talking about, then back it up with data. Any ideas from you other techies about tracking data usage like this? Appreciate any suggestions. Let the beating commence :) I have a friend who went away for a 5 day weekend
Charlie Gilley Stuck in
Silly question are you checking only download rates or combining with upload? I'm not in the US so I'm not familiar with the ISP's there :). Back in the day one of my ISP's did calculations by combining down/up rates to get more out of their customers.
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Silly question are you checking only download rates or combining with upload? I'm not in the US so I'm not familiar with the ISP's there :). Back in the day one of my ISP's did calculations by combining down/up rates to get more out of their customers.
I'm down into the cable modem guts at this point. I can track the Total Unerrored Codewords which gives me a very accurate measure of how much data is coming into the modem. In the past 1.15 days, I see 11GB. About as close to the metal as I can get. Off on jury duty, so haven't done much the last few days.
Charlie Gilley Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759