Online games and bandwidth.

DorsetBoy · Mar 04, 2010, 09:52:30

So just how much bandwidth do games like Halo and Runescape use?

Dear son seems to be glued to them every waking hour unless forcibly removed from the house and the monthly bandwidth use is growing alarmingly.

His machine is clean,it gets a smart scan every day and full check twice a week.

Rik · Mar 04, 2010, 09:55:02

Sorry, no idea, Dorset, but why not install something like Netmeter or TBBMeter on the machine?

DorsetBoy · Mar 04, 2010, 10:04:31

I have just placed a monitor on his PC,have to go through hoops as it's a restricted account of course.

Supanova · Mar 04, 2010, 17:24:18

They use a very small amount of bandwidth. As an educated guess I'd say about 2-10MB per hour depending on the game.

Runescape will have only use a very tiny bandwidth usage because of it's inane simplicity. Halo will use more being an FPS but still I seriously doubt it's usage would exceed 2MB per hour.

Niall · Mar 04, 2010, 18:50:12

Yeah it'll be a very small amount of data for the games themselves. If you're being told they don't download anything and you're seeing an increase in usage, they're telling fibs

DorsetBoy · Mar 04, 2010, 20:19:07

Well............... I have checked that there are no "odd" connections and have run a sys log for the router to check what he is connecting to.

Today I can find no downloads of any kind, since adding the bandwidth meter @10.30 am he has clocked up 1.55gb useage.

Supanova · Mar 04, 2010, 20:21:26

It has got to be torrenting, that is illegal file sharing, or downloading games from a download retailer like steam. I can't think of anything else that could consume so much bandwidth so quickly.

DorsetBoy · Mar 04, 2010, 20:28:05

I can't see any torrent connections,Eset shows nothing out of place, will have to check further tomorrow.

Niall · Mar 05, 2010, 09:10:38

It is also possible that if they're playing multiplayer games, that they are downloading map packs for the games. However, if the usage continues to increase it might be an idea to have a look through the computer to see what's installed. As mentioned previously it could be games being purchased through Steam, or torrents. Oh and torrents are not illegal, it's the content that can be. A lot of people use torrents to distribute game updates, and music to name but a couple of things. Have a look on www.mininova.org. They're now a legal site that people get their music out to the public on, to help get better known.

Oh and if the router is wireless, check to make sure the security is actually working, as it could even be a neighbour stealing bandwidth.

Failing all that, definitely look for a monitoring program. If there's only your PC and the one being used for games, and you know for a fact that yours isn't the one downloading on the network, then you've already narrowed down the guilty party/computer.

zappaDPJ · Mar 05, 2010, 09:33:20

Quote from: DorsetBoy on Mar 04, 2010, 20:19:07
Today I can find no downloads of any kind, since adding the bandwidth meter @10.30 am he has clocked up 1.55gb useage.

I doubt an online game running 24/7 for a month could consume that much bandwidth. The data sent and received from a gaming server generally relates to movement and collision detection. All the graphics and animation are handled client side e.g. your sons PC.

Assuming that the PC is clean and there really are no hidden downloads occurring the only time a game of any sort consumes a lot of bandwidth is if the game gets updated which general won't happen more than once every few months.

YouTube, BBC iPlayer and any form of video streaming will however use a huge amount of bandwidth in comparison. Just 3 hours of iPlayer would consume the 1.55GB you've mentioned, just over an hour's worth in fact if it's viewed in HD.

DorsetBoy · Mar 05, 2010, 13:47:38

Set up is 3 machines hardwired (no wireless in use here) as individual units to a Draytek Vigor 2820 router.

Win7 ,Eset Smart Security set to Strict No sharing.

Today within 2.5 hours P's machine had logged 0.58gig. Yes he uses You Tube but not constantly.So I restarted his machine and watched the network connections displayed by Eset.........

svchost constantly connected to 94.245.115.118 .... killed connection,immediately replaced by 194.245.115.119,this went on up to .189. This is Microsoft UK and all the time it is polling with packets going in and out.
Found 2 more unexplained svchost connections running,these do not show up on the other machines.

Re ran full scans with Eset. Ran Malwarebytes and again in safemode........... nothing shows up. Downloaded Spybot S+D, nothing serious showed up though it did say there were registry changes in Explorer. Added the S+D Host files list and cleared all the temp files and cookies etc.

Result, the permanent network connections that were polling away have disappeared.
Now to see what happens over the next few days.

Niall · Mar 05, 2010, 13:57:40

Ah that sounds like the old trojan virus from a few years ago. Actually several years ago thinking about it. I remember seeing that at a lan event. The security we set up (we were lucky enough to be given a hardware firewall and dedicated switch, by a local computer shop for the event!). This detected peoples computers trying to contact the net when we had no internet at the event. We cleared quite a few PCs that day

It does beg the question where that virus has come from in the first place as you've got anti virus software that catches it. I'd imagine it's come from an email attachment or something as that would easily bypass it, as a lot of trojans avoid detection when the user installs it themselves!

That being said, if you've used hijack this and spybot I'm surprised it hasn't detected a virus and/or removed it.

DorsetBoy · Mar 05, 2010, 14:07:55

It is very odd as this is a new,fresh install of Win7,only been running a few weeks, he has no email client,has messenger though but I cannot see any file transfers in the log.

His account is "Standard" not admin, otherwise the system would be in tatters

as he can't stop fiddling with settings.

Eset is set to max security and max clean in silent mode ,and settings are password protected.

What I could not understand is why so much data was passing to and from Microsoft UK

Niall · Mar 05, 2010, 14:17:03

I suppose it's possible it's an update process of some sort, but that normally clearly shows as windows update in the process list. Have you tried google searching the IP addresses to see what people have posted about it? Maybe check the knowledge base on M$ site too.

Technical Ben · Mar 18, 2010, 11:17:02

Depending on the game it can be as high as 100mb per hour. But shouldn't go over that. An entire days worth of gaming hardly goes over .5gb here... Um I mean for OTHER people.

Glad you got it sorted.

gizmo71 · Mar 18, 2010, 12:11:52

The only time I've ever blown my monthly allowance was when I misconfigured Windows Server Update Service and ended up pulling the whole Windows Update repository by accident.

I play various online racing games and the bandwidth used is trivial.

Niall · Mar 18, 2010, 18:38:29

Quote from: Technical Ben on Mar 18, 2010, 11:17:02
Depending on the game it can be as high as 100mb per hour. But shouldn't go over that. An entire days worth of gaming hardly goes over .5gb here... Um I mean for OTHER people.
Glad you got it sorted.

100mb? What game is that? I'll be avoiding that one!

Technical Ben · Mar 21, 2010, 13:01:27

Hmmm. I may have included my own imaginary overheads there, that I use as a buffer to stop me going over my limit.

If I pretend it eats more usage, I'll use it less.
I have just checked, and FPS like Moder Warfare 2 etc use about 20-30mb per hour. But if you include updates, map downloads etc it can creep up a little.
But I guess the likes of World of Warcraft use less than is available on dialup.