Download allowance "stolen" ??

PearlJam · Nov 30, 2006, 09:43:43

Hi all

I logged on today at ~7.20am to check my monthly usage.

Seemingly, for today, 30th November, I had already downloaded 2.36GB and uploaded about the same !!

I didn't leave my machine downloading overnight.

I spoke to Simon who was able to tell me that all this downloading took place between 2 and 3am

If only my connection could shift that amount - in an hour I usually only get a couple of hundred megs (if that).

I'm waiting to see if Simon can come up with anything - I'm baffled.

Nerval · Nov 30, 2006, 09:57:45

Sounds like a wireless router left switched on.
Or burglars.
Or even a clerical error on IDNet's part.

Do you not run Netmeter to double-check IDNet's figures?

PearlJam · Nov 30, 2006, 11:02:46

Simon has corrected the monthly total

Nerval - I don't have a router. I'll try Netmeter tonight.

Nerval · Nov 30, 2006, 11:39:33

What you report is actually much more commonly the user's son who's been downloading Casino Royale from Demonoid and saying he hasn't!!

Re netmeter, I've got a router, so there's no little VDU icon in the bottom corner of my screen showing me when there's net activity, and I do like to see if it's going when it should be and stopped when it should be. So I put in netmeter, which is free, to load at startup. This gives me little green up and down arrows in the system tray to show activity, and also a bigger display giving the actual values, which I've parked on the top left of the screen so I can look at it when I want.

I've then set it to warn me at a figure several GB below my IDNet allowance, and can check every so often how my usage is going and compare it with IDNet's figure. The correlation is very close, so either they're both way out, or both right.

Rik · Nov 30, 2006, 16:45:28

You can turn on that VDU screen, Settings > Network Connections > (Lan interface in use) > Right-click > Properties, check "Show icon in notification area...".

Nerval · Nov 30, 2006, 17:01:22

Yes thanks I know and that's what I had done before I discovered Netmeter. But I like the little up and down arrows far more.

So I retract all of the misleading bit. Poetic licence. I'll get Bliar to hold an independent inquiry and clear me.

Rik · Nov 30, 2006, 17:40:08

Ah. Often they're set up not to display, so I thought you might have been caught out by that. The limitation of NetMeter is it's only counting traffic on the machine it's running on. I don't have a problem really, but I like to keep the router where I can see it, so if there's unexplained activity, I will tend to notice.

I suppose you can always count the packets in the router, but that's hard work.

BitMeter is supposed to be a bit better than NetMeter, though I haven't got round to trying it yet.

Nerval · Nov 30, 2006, 18:05:03

Rik
Sorry if my previous post sounded a bit sharp.

I'd just finished bollocking Sooty for coming home with a bitten ear and not calmed down yet..

Only got the one m/c so no problem with Netmeter.
I'll look at the other one though.

MoHux · Nov 30, 2006, 18:12:19

WELL!!! There's sympathy for you. Bitten ear AND a rollicking!!

Wonder what the other one looks like??

Rik · Nov 30, 2006, 18:20:43

Quote from: Nerval on Nov 30, 2006, 18:05:03
Sorry if my previous post sounded a bit sharp.
I'd just finished bollocking Sooty for coming home with a bitten ear and not calmed down yet..

Nae bother. I didn't know you were a vet though...

Nerval · Nov 30, 2006, 19:45:59

Quote from: MoHux on Nov 30, 2006, 18:12:19
WELL!!! There's sympathy for you. Bitten ear AND a rollicking!!
Wonder what the other one looks like??

You wouldn't be sympathetic either at £30 per visit to the vet's. He had us there last Christmas Eve, little devil, though I can usually prevent that if I find the bites and start bathing them in time.

He's been neutered, though you wouldn't know it, and we've built him up to a good fighting weight of 7Kg, so he wins a lot more than he loses. (The bigger cat usually wins.)
Poor little soul had been living rough for 3 months when we adopted him, and was very thin, so tended to lose most of the time - hence his ears which are a little on the raggy side.

MoHux · Nov 30, 2006, 22:22:16

I like the sound of Sooty!

He's a very lucky cat. I worked at a Marina for several years where there were cats living rough. I wasted umpteen nights trying to make friends with one or the other, but without a lot of success. I lost all my sandwiches, but they would only come SO close, and no further. I even cadged fish from the trawlers to give them.
So you did well to make a friend of one.
My own cat (died last year, and I do miss her), would look at me in disgust when she smelled those 'common cats' on me!!

Nerval · Dec 01, 2006, 07:41:01

Good on you Mo!

It's not what it seems with Sooty though - he and his brother (Sweep, what else?) lived up the road from us, but had been coming to see us since they were kittens. They used to come in our garden as I'm at home all day, and sometimes in the winter I had to carry them home to make sure they got in at night.

Then we'd just come back from holiday in October a couple of years ago, and found them in the garden again, so rang up the owner to ask if she wanted them taken home. She said she hadn't seen them for three months - living 50 yards away - and was going to get shut of them .

Well we hadn't been feeding them , and clearly she hadn't, so they'd been fending for themselves, which explained why they looked so thin.

So it was an instant decision to let them adopt us.
But they weren't real feral ones like yours, just neglected.

Sooty (that's him on the avatar) will be getting a season ticket to the vet's for Christmas.

Glenn · Dec 01, 2006, 08:29:20

Nerval,

I don't wish to alarm you, but 20 months ago my cat Muffitt was in a fight. He came home with a bleeding ear, after 2 or 3 months he started going off his food. I took him to the vet, who took a blood test and found his liver was having problems. He was then put on a course of drugs, these had no effect, so back to the vet, another blood test, xrays and a night under observation, I was then told that he had contracted Feline aids, he died, approx 6 weeks later.

Nerval · Dec 01, 2006, 08:54:20

Quote from: Glenn on Dec 01, 2006, 08:29:20
I don't wish to alarm you,

Are you sure?

?

Thanks, we have another little cat lives with us in the daytime and one of her kittens was a fighter who died of that.

Sooty is just a fighter and that's the way it is, I'm afraid. He'd clearly be better off (and so would my wallet) if he didn't fight, but unless you want to ring him up and explain that to him, I don't see an awful lot I can do about it. (i.e.zippo).

Did you know that the secret of happiness is accepting things as they are, not as you would like them to be?

Great name though, Muffitt.

Sooty would be Dennis and Sweep would be Timmy if they hadn't already had names.

Have you got another cat since?

stevelondon · Dec 04, 2006, 22:21:54

Ive had 2 cats Jaime died at 10 and got Thomas and he died at 10 last easter strange but just a coincidence.

Nerval · Dec 05, 2006, 07:28:05

10 isn't a bad age for an active cat especially if he goes fighting. Fighters seem to live hard, die young.

I had one lady cat lived to 19, which is very old, but whenever they go it's distressing.

stevelondon · Dec 05, 2006, 20:33:29

I must say that what ever animal (pet) you have you naturally get attached to so i never got another pet perhaps that will change in the future