Exceeding inclusive bandwidth

[Kitty]

Yawn!

I've only been receiving my broadband from idnet for a few weeks and keep getting warnings that I am exceeding my inclusive bandwidth. This seems to be for no obvious reason. I am not doing anything that should use this much as far as I know.

Last time I tried running spybot and it seemed to improve but may have been a coincidence as it fluctuates.

I got a message just now and when i checked my account it said  day 15, which I assume is today, 0.15 already and we were only about half an hour in!

Any ideas?-it is boring when it keeps happening.

Please use non boffin language as i am a simpleton!!

Ta!

[Rik]

Hi Kitty

Download a copy of Netmeter and install it on every machine you have connected to your router. Keep an eye on it for unexplained traffic, but remember it will record traffic across the LAN in general, not just WAN traffic. You can probably isolate that figure in your router, but it's likely to be in packets.

Knowing how much bandwidth we use is a black art to an extent, for example, I get 40-60 emails a day, some of which are quite highly illustrated HTML, while others will have significant attachments. Running speed tests is another good way to get through bandwidth. Things like YouTube and Google Earth will eat your allowance. You need to analyse your usage pattern to see if you can account for the traffic.

If you can't, do you have a software firewall that will stop rogue apps hooking your connection? If you are using wireless, is it secured to at least WPA-PSK?

Remember also that there were up to 20 security patches for Windows yesterday and these will have been downloaded by each machine connected to your LAN.

I have never found one malware product which will pickup up everything, so I use AdAware and SpySweeper.

Finally, what AV software do you have in place.