7.30 pm!!

[Moley]

OK here's a weird thing - for the last 3 weeks - at 7.30pm on the dot, on a thursday evening, our internet has dropped out for about 5 minutes   I have checked all the usual things, nothing has changed - its just plain weird!!

Anyway, the reason I'm posting - tis about my download limit.  I'm on the 30gig limit and last couple of months have had a "warning" e-mail from Idnet that I'm approaching limit - and once did in fact go over incurring a cost of £1 extra    My question - I play WOW (I think I've mentioned  ) and there have been some largish patches lately, but even so nothing in the region of my 30 limit - the only other thing I use regularly is iTunes.  My kids have recently discovered BBC iPlayer - how much does this use??  I assumed it was smallish - but this is the only thing thats different I'm thinking I might have to limit their usage - anyone know?

[somanyholes]

Hi Moley

The wow patch that was released recently was about 1.1gb so it won't be that. As far playing wow it hardly uses any bandwidth, you can play it on dial-up with few issues.

It will more than likely be the young ones in the house using the data  Iplayer will use a lot of bandwidth! Also they may be using p2p

the best thing you can do really is to stick something like netmeter on all the machines, this will give you an idea of what each machine is using, (as long as the kids don't turn it off). You could also look at http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/3768-thinkbroadband-launches-bandwidth-meter.html

If you use wireless make sure it's locked down.....

[Steve]

I would suspect iplayer as the culprit especially if downloading instead of using the low resolution flash player.I equipped each machine with the bandwidth usage rss feed from idnet and encouraged them to be responsible with their usage and restrict their usage when getting near the limit. I also threatened to blacklist their machine via the router for persistent offending but never had to carry it out.Interestingly since my eldest son has left for uni I am using 15-20gb less per month.So the solution is to get rid of the kids.

[somanyholes]

I also threatened to blacklist their machine via the router for persistent offending

Your starting to sound like a gov official steve 

[Steve]

No just Victor Meldrew I always get left with the empty packets.

[Rik]

OK here's a weird thing - for the last 3 weeks - at 7.30pm on the dot, on a thursday evening, our internet has dropped out for about 5 minutes   I have checked all the usual things, nothing has changed - its just plain weird!!

My first thought, Chris, would be an electrical appliance turning on, something which draws a lot of power - not necessarily one of yours either. Best bet would be to run Routerstats and see what the noise margin does at that time.

[siege2]

wow that seams like a power drain on your electrical network, is there some electrical item what draws alot off amps plugged into your electical sockets around that time, maybe your consumer box is over maxing out , cannot give you the power and drops lower then normal voltage required, resulting in the router problem.

[Moley]

OK now this is getting weird.  My internet just collapsed at 4.21pm and came back at 4.50pm.  Thats the longest its been out.  Nothing in the house changed during that time - I was online and home alone and it just went off, again nothing changed and it came back on again.  Something is going on somewhere to cause this.  Anyone else on gw5 having any problems?

[Rik]

See the service announcements, Chris, there's a router causing problems, it will be patched tomorrow morning.

[Moley]

oh thanks Rik - where are you seeing service announcements? I can't see any ... never had to look before - which says a lot for idnets reliability

[Moley]

nvm found em

[Rik]

I phone people, Chris. The status page didn't get updated.

[zappaDPJ]

Just to confirm that the recent WoW patches, and there have been a number of large patches, shouldn't have consumed anything more than 2 to 3GB. I'm not really sure how much iPlayer would be responsible for as it's obviously dependent on compression ratios, length of content, number of items viewed but my guess would be something of that nature could really hammer bandwidth usage if it's used on a regular basis.

As has been said the traffic involved from playing WoW or any other on-line game should be of no consequence.

Oh while I'm here, I have to ask, Horde or Alliance? 

[Moley]

Oh while I'm here, I have to ask, Horde or Alliance? 

Sorry I missed that little question - I'm horde - is there any other way to be? Thunderhorn if you're interested....

Meanwhile, I've established that iPlayer is indeed the culprit for my heavy usage.  Threats have not worked (my kids are resilient).  How do I block it on my router? any ideas?

[Rik]

It depends on the router as to whether you can, Chris, do you have any parental control software installed?

[kinmel]

  How do I block it on my router? any ideas?

Iplayer uses Kontiki as its P2P client, Kontiki runs as kservices.exe.

You can set kservices.exe to manual rather than automatic startup in msconfig on their PCs, or you can block Port 1935 in the router firewall.

It is possible however that Port 1935 is also used by other applications such as Flash media player.

[Sebby]

There's an option in the iPlayer Download manager not to upload once something's downloaded, iirc.

[Lance]

Although the issue is the download, Sebby

[Ann]

Can't you just tell the children "no"?

[Lance]

Threats have not worked (my kids are resilient).

There is your answer, Ann. 

[Dopamine]

Can't you just tell the children "no"?

lol. Reminds me of when one of my daughters was 13 and I bought the family a new television. She took the old one and put it in her bedroom. I wasn't keen on her having it, but she argued her case quite well so I relented on the understanding that she should only watch it occasionally, and that if the program she wanted to watch was also being watched by the family too, she should join us and not be anti-social locked away in her bedroom.

That didn't work. She would often watch TV alone while siblings and parents were together downstairs, and despite reasonable requests to stick to her agreement, she didn't.

The answer? I removed the ring-main fuse that covered the power sockets to her bedroom. A 24hr sulk ensued, but it solved the problem!

[somanyholes]

there are a number of ways that you can block access to iplayer. I'm not sure if they are using kontiki software or flash? I have a feeling it will be the latter. Flash will affect your bandwidth usage...

The easiest way to do all this is probably to signup for opendns (http://www.opendns.com/) it's free and allows you to do content filtering, block certain websites/categories. You will need to do some reading but it's nothing complex. Once you are signed up just change all the computers/routers etc to use the opendns ip addresses.

Then add www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer to the block list. No more iplayer If you need more info just ask

[Lance]

Would adding a entry in the hosts file be any good?

[somanyholes]

if you used the hosts file you would have to block the whole of the bbc.co.uk.

[Lance]

Cool, i didn't think it would work!

[Sebby]

Although the issue is the download, Sebby

Of course, I totally forgot that upload isn't counted with IDNet. But then I can't understand why having the Manager open should make a difference. It only downloads when something is put on to download!

[Moley]

And there was me thinking this would be simple......

[Rik]

Be aware that the BBC are going to start streaming live programmes next week, Chris, so it will only get worse.

[g7pkf]

Rik please do not fill us all with doom and despair.

[Sebby]

Don't worry, Dean, we're here for you.

[Moley]

OK I'm a bit of a noob when it comes to these things.  I have a linksys router (WAG160N).  I want to do something in the router which means they kids can't access iplayer.  Is there a simple way or is it just too complicated for words?  What I don't want is to have to access their laptops etc - just too much like hard work, and besides being 17 and 18 they are bound to find a way round what I've done - but they don't have access to the router, so thats my line of attack :p

[Rik]

Your best bet, Chris, would be to use OpenDNS. That way it's outside the router and can't be tampered with.

[Sebby]

I agree. Use OpenDNS (define them in the router) and then register with them, which will give you all kinds of options, including blocking sites.

[g7pkf]

Thirded.

And its quite easy to use