Kitz Forum
Broadband Related => ADSL Issues => Topic started by: surfdude on October 24, 2006, 09:53:37 AM
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I have recently been charged by BT for over use of my BT broadband line. I am on Option 4 which gives a 50gb monthly allowance. They claim that for the past three months I have used between 70GB and 130GB, for which they have charged me ?1 per GB. This is despite the fact I was away for most of September and had switched the PC and Router off !!!
They have been stubborn in the extreme stating that the stats are provide by BT wholesale and it is impossible to make a mistake. I do occasionally use P2P sharing, but always remove the files once upload is equal to download. My wireless router has security enabled so I am sure no-one is ?stealing? my bandwidth.
Yesterday they told me I had used 57GB this month so far ? weird.
Is there some software I could install that will monitor the usage ?
I have a Belkin F5D7633 modem/router
Mike
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Hi surfdude.
Theres a few progs that will monitor your usage, but they monitor usage per machine, so if you have a network then you will have to add usage across each PC together.
Theres a list of the progs to choose from here:
http://www.kitz.co.uk/links/down.htm
Net Meter is a popular freebie used by many.
NetLimiter 2 is fairly new.. but something Ive been using for several months and personally quite like since it allows you to monitor how much bandwidth youve used depending on each particular application... as well as overall daily, monthly etc.
You can run both if you like as the 2 dont conflict with each other.
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If you have the BT home hub, connect that for 1 or 2 months, as that shows you your downloaded amount, I would do that just to make sure that BT aint coming wide with you, I did use netmeter to check how much I downloaded on one particular machine, but as kitz says, it only works for one machine so if you have a few pc's then it wont give you the exact total as you will need to run it on all machines then add the total of each.
best bet is to use the bt hub if you have one just for a month, just to see if your figures and bt's figures tally, if they do then go back to using your old router.
I have a brandnew bt home hub for sale if you want one :)
another thing you might like to know is that on BT's website, they state that they DONT charge for over usage nor do they cut you off and that they dont perform any traffic shaping/throttling in anyform.
ALL of them lies.
Well atleast with the residential broadband :D
since you are on option 4, you are probably better off migrating to BT business, even if you are still in contract with bt total, your contract gets transferred to bt business and you get unlimited downloads a month and a magic router for ?32, roughly what you are paying now, maybe a pound or 2 dearer, but you get UK support and a 8-24hr problem fix turn around.
Thats what I did, I signed on with Bt total and hated it for the 3 weeks that I was with them, I then migrated free of charge to BT business, and havent been happier, no download limit, no problems :)
and no, you dont need a business to have bt business broadband ;)
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Hi,
That NetLimiter 2 is quite nice but I can't see a way of exporting the figures to a spreadsheet for analysis and record- not sure if the pro version does either.
Any ideas?
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I've tried NetLimiter 2 Pro and had some misgivings.
No obvious way of saving the data to XLS or anything else very useful.
On my installation it seems to forget all the earlier records apart from the current day and would periodically multiply the usage by a factor of 10.
You could try PRTG http://www.paessler.com/prtg
PRTG uses software 'sensors' to monitor bandwidth etc.
Its free [Freeware Edition] for up to three 'sensors' and although a little involved works well.
You can monitor and log statistics with considerable precision and detail to your hearts content.
I would suggest the easiest way initially is to create a sensor to monitor bandwidth/usage using 'Automatic Network Discovery', 'SNMP' and 'Standard Traffic Sensor'. There is a comprehensive manual which will help although as I recall a lot of it wasn't relevant to the simple usage you and I would need.
Sounds complicated but the above should help you to get started.
Going from memory, and this goes back a long time, select 'Use as Service' on installing and it will run whenever your computer is powered up.
Similarly I vaguely recall my PC didn't have SNMP software installed. I think I googled for it and it seemed obvious at the time what to install and how to do it. I may be wrong on this but either way it wasn't a problem.
Edit: I may have picked up SNMP software from Add/Remove Windows Components [XP] - 'Management and Monitoring Tools'.