IDNET'S BANDWIDTH USAGE MONITOR

foreversummer · Oct 15, 2010, 08:18:29

Hi

What's the consensus on here regarding the accuracy of the bandwidth usage monitor. Anyone noticed any discrepancies at all?

Foreversummer

JB · Oct 15, 2010, 08:23:05

I don't tend to check it often unless I have done some major downloading. When I do it seems accurate to me.

Not forgetting that uploaded date doesn't count towards your allocation.

DorsetBoy · Oct 15, 2010, 09:09:57

Quote from: foreversummer on Oct 15, 2010, 08:18:29
Hi

What's the consensus on here regarding the accuracy of the bandwidth usage monitor. Anyone noticed any discrepancies at all?

Foreversummer

It is very accurate. If you have any doubts or issues over bandwidth use and maybe connections to malware this tool NETWORX MONITOR added to each PC/Laptop in your home will give you all the info you need.

Technical Ben · Oct 15, 2010, 09:55:44

Whether I use a lot of bandwidth, or hardly any, it's always spot on (AFAIK). Also remember to secure any wireless connections.

zappaDPJ · Oct 15, 2010, 10:28:20

Over time it's always in sync with the local bandwidth monitor I use. The only time I see any discrepancy is in the short term which always balances out within a few hours.

Simon · Oct 15, 2010, 11:01:30

If you download a huge amount in the first 24-48 hours of your billing period, you may get a projected bandwidth warning, but it usually evens out over a couple of days.

Lance · Oct 15, 2010, 11:03:35

Quote from: zappaDPJ on Oct 15, 2010, 10:28:20
Over time it's always in sync with the local bandwidth monitor I use. The only time I see any discrepancy is in the short term which always balances out within a few hours.

IDNet receive the data from BT's radius servers, which often causes a small delay.

iankathy · Oct 15, 2010, 11:56:02

I do not have an issue with the total download logged, but in my case the breakdown between peak/non peak has been seriously wrong on a number of occasions - especially after a significant download. I flagged this to the IDNet team by Email when I first noticed this a few weeks ago, and James responded to the effect that the matter would be investigated. However, yesterday I downloaded a significant upgrade to my antivirus system (~ 100 MBytes), and this was complete by 08.25, but when I inspected my download statistics this morning there was nil in the off peak column, and the total downloaded yesterday is shown in the peak column. Is this an issue that others have noticed, and can it be corrected?

Cheers, Ian.

Gary · Oct 15, 2010, 12:07:08

Quote from: iankathy on Oct 15, 2010, 11:56:02
I do not have an issue with the total download logged, but in my case the breakdown between peak/non peak has been seriously wrong on a number of occasions - especially after a significant download. I flagged this to the IDNet team by Email when I first noticed this a few weeks ago, and James responded to the effect that the matter would be investigated. However, yesterday I downloaded a significant upgrade to my antivirus system (~ 100 MBytes), and this was complete by 08.25, but when I inspected my download statistics this morning there was nil in the off peak column, and the total downloaded yesterday is shown in the peak column. Is this an issue that others have noticed, and can it be corrected?

Cheers, Ian.

As Lance said earlier sometimes there is a small delay in showing what has been downloaded due to the information being retrieved from BT's radius servers, I would imagine it will shop up later on, if not contact support again if you think your usage information is wrong. Personally I have never really noticed any issues, but I do not look that often at my usage anyway.

Niall · Oct 15, 2010, 14:03:14

It's accurate for me. It's been shouting at me as I've been downloading abou 5gb a week since I got my xbox

JB · Oct 15, 2010, 14:37:46

Quote from: iankathy on Oct 15, 2010, 11:56:02
but in my case the breakdown between peak/non peak has been seriously wrong on a number of occasions - especially after a significant download.

I have seen this effect mentioned on forums for other ISP's as well.

I may be wrong, but it looks like any download started in either on-peak or off-peak will continue at the starting 'period' even if the clock flips from on-peak/off-peak during the download. I'm only guessing but this might be a function of the way the data is presented to IDNet by the BT Radius servers.

I tend to automatically start my major downloads after midnight and they are usually finished well before peak period arrives. This might be why my figure of on and off peak seem accurate.

armadillo · Oct 15, 2010, 20:50:19

I have not been with idnet for long but the bandwidth usage seems to tie in pretty well with the local bandwidth monitor I am using. Allowing for the fact that the idnet figure does not include anything downloaded between the previous midnight and now, I would say it is accurate. I have not checked the daily figures on the CSV file against the daily figures looged by my local monitors though.

One thing that I think somewhat useless is the projected usage figure. I see little point in basing a projected monthly total on the previous 7 days.

Certainly, my downloading pattern is not uniform. The previous 7 days would usually be no guide whatever to what will happen in the rest of the month. But I check the totals daily.

Bill · Oct 16, 2010, 10:15:16

Quote from: armadillo on Oct 15, 2010, 20:50:19But I check the totals daily.

Easiest is to enable the RSS feed and get them sent to your mailbox.

FWIW they seem accurate to me, and the RSS feed includes the projected usage figure; which has it's uses, I think, for some people.

Steve · Oct 16, 2010, 10:19:48

I've got my Idnet rss feed bookmark sitting in the middle of my bookmarks bar in Safari- so no excuses for me

Bill · Oct 16, 2010, 10:29:30

All my RSS feeds are set up in Mail, it checks every 30 minutes for anything new so I don't even have to click a bookmark

armadillo · Oct 16, 2010, 17:36:15

Quote from: Bill on Oct 16, 2010, 10:15:16
Easiest is to enable the RSS feed and get them sent to your mailbox.

How do you do that?

Steve · Oct 16, 2010, 17:54:13

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-help/add-an-rss-feed-HA010159539.aspx

You can grab your RSS feed URL from within your iDNet Customer Portal > Bandwidth Usage

Bill · Oct 16, 2010, 18:27:54

Thanks for that Steve, I should have made it clearer that I was using a Mac, I didn't have a clue how to do it in Windows

armadillo · Oct 16, 2010, 20:30:41

Ah, thanks Steve. That explains why I could not find anything in my email client. I am using Outlook Express 6, not Outlook. I did grab the RSS link a while ago and add it to my RSS client (I use Juice and it works fine on all my other RSS links). But it never retrieves anything from idnet, possibly because the RSS is a secure login one and there is nothing in Juice help to say if it can handle secure RSS or not.

Steve · Oct 16, 2010, 21:03:54

Not tried this but I found RSS Popper http://rsspopper.blogspot.com/2004/10/download.html

The feed seems easy to add to most common browsers

armadillo · Oct 17, 2010, 01:11:30

Thanks Steve. I tried out that RSS Popper. It retrieves the feed data OK. Unfortunately, it also interfered with a completely unrelated program so I got rid of it again. Found that Juice does have an authentication for secure logins. If I can work out the password, I might get that to work (it might be that 32 chara alphanumeric string in the RSS URL after the username). Anyway, I think I would rather simply access the usage stats by logging into the portal. It is very fast and easy.

DorsetBoy · Oct 19, 2010, 06:27:55

OPERA

foreversummer · Oct 20, 2010, 20:26:30

I've read your posts with interest.

Let me just say that it is definitely not accurate in my case. My family and I use the internet every day and on two days this month (October) no usage whatsoever ever has been recorded in IDNet's bandwidth monitor. Now if that can happen, why can't it happen the other way?

Rik · Oct 20, 2010, 20:27:45

Have you asked support?

foreversummer · Oct 20, 2010, 20:40:50

No Rik I haven't because to be honest with you I really do not want to have to keep phoning my ISP. I really don't have the time or need the hassle.

Since I joined IDnet on 16th August I've had nothing but problems. My router (which I purchased from them) has been in and out of the master socket like a fiddler's elbow on their request. I've gone to great expense to have a engineer visit my house to go through all my internal wiring and everything is fine. Still repeatedly I have frequent disconnections. On top of this we have the problems we have all had this evening.

My bandwidth monitor is obviously not correct. How can it record no usage on two days when we use it every day. My usage this month is way over what I used in August and September for no obvious reason. How can I prove that we have not been using the internet any more this month than we used it in August or September? I can't.

I chose IDNet because of the customer reviews and because I was very happy to pay a premium price for a premium service. Now I'm not so sure I made the right decision.

Foreversummer

DorsetBoy · Oct 20, 2010, 20:45:36

Quote from: foreversummer on Oct 20, 2010, 20:40:50
No Rik I haven't because to be honest with you I really do not want to have to keep phoning my ISP. I really don't have the time or need the hassle.

Since I joined IDnet on 16th August I've had nothing but problems. My router (which I purchased from them) has been in and out of the master socket like a fiddler's elbow on their request. I've gone to great expense to have a engineer visit my house to go through all my internal wiring and everything is fine. Still repeatedly I have frequent disconnections. On top of this we have the problems we have all had this evening.

My bandwidth monitor is obviously not correct. How can it record no usage on two days when we use it every day. My usage this month is way over what I used in August and September for no obvious reason. How can I prove that we have not been using the internet any more this month than we used it in August or September? I can't.

I chose IDNet because of the customer reviews and because I was very happy to pay a premium price for a premium service. Now I'm not so sure I made the right decision.

Foreversummer

I suggested previously that you add Networx a free application to each machine, this will give hourly/daily/monthly usage per machine.

Stats from the BT radius servers do sometimes take a while to get to the ISP which is why you get odd days missing,sometimes the BT system is several days late but does catch up. This months bandwidth is up for anyone using Windows as the updates were very big, on several machines you will see a bigger rise.

Rik · Oct 20, 2010, 20:51:19

Quote from: foreversummer on Oct 20, 2010, 20:40:50
No Rik I haven't because to be honest with you I really do not want to have to keep phoning my ISP. I really don't have the time or need the hassle.

Since I joined IDnet on 16th August I've had nothing but problems. My router (which I purchased from them) has been in and out of the master socket like a fiddler's elbow on their request. I've gone to great expense to have a engineer visit my house to go through all my internal wiring and everything is fine. Still repeatedly I have frequent disconnections. On top of this we have the problems we have all had this evening.

My bandwidth monitor is obviously not correct. How can it record no usage on two days when we use it every day. My usage this month is way over what I used in August and September for no obvious reason. How can I prove that we have not been using the internet any more this month than we used it in August or September? I can't.

I chose IDNet because of the customer reviews and because I was very happy to pay a premium price for a premium service. Now I'm not so sure I made the right decision.

Foreversummer

What can I say? I can't discuss your account with IDNet, I can intercede with technical issues, but not monetary ones. I can think of reasons why your usage may not be showing correctly, eg the BT radius servers are not supplying the data on time, then deliver a 'lump', but I can't know.

If you're resyncing, then it's an issue with noise or interference between you and the exchange. Have you tried a different filter and, preferably a different router. Are you using the test socket behind the faceplate or the master socket? Have you tried doing a MW radio walkabout to try and find any sources of noise?

Have you checked your router is fully secured, and swept all machines for viruses and malware? Have you checked who is doing what with their connection, eg watching YouTube or TV quickly eats bandwidth. As Dorset says, there are apps which will enable you to check data usage on every machine in the house.

You must decide whether it was the right decision for you. I've been with them for four years and, despite the odd bumpy patch, I've never felt the need to leave.

tKe · Oct 20, 2010, 21:04:18

Can I just ask foreversummer to confirm that it is not the Bandwidth Usage Monitor Windows Vista/7 Gadget or Android AppWidget under discussion and is in fact the data available through the RSS feed / customer portal / email notifications?

The Gadget/Widget are not provided by IDNet, but are written by me and have no guarantee for their accuracy. The data they use can be more accurate than the figures available through the RSS feeds (as they contain the most up to date data from the radius servers) however the availability of this data is not guaranteed. The only bandwidth usage information available that is directly provided by IDNet is through their customer portal and/or the RSS feeds, however this only includes information up to midnight of the previous day.

Any defects / comments regarding the aforementioned gadget/widget should be posted in the appropriate stickied thread.

Rik · Oct 20, 2010, 21:06:08

I'm pretty sure it's not your widget under attack.