20 Mb per hour idling in Windows 8 / Windows 8.1 Why is that?

Philminator

Honorable
Sep 8, 2012
30
0
10,530
Why is my computer sucking up all my bandwidth? I have a 10GB cap per month and that costs about 80$. 20Mb per hour is 480Mb per day, which means after 3 weeks my cap of 10GB is used up idling. Some say "This is normal man, this is 2013 get with the times of the sophisticated internet". I don't think 15GB a month idling is normal. The proof of that is I closely monitor my usage through the "Show estimated data usage" in Windows 8 which has always been pin point accurate for me. I also double check with my Bell account to make sure. The point is up until I updated to windows 8.1 or so is when I noticed the massive spike, I thought maybe something in Windows 8.1 was more intensive than Windows 8. Pre Windows 8.1 I was idling at 1-2Mb per hour. If I was playing World of Warcraft and idling on Facebook in the background I was maybe running 15-20Mb per hour. Now with that same combination it's more like 60-70Mb per hour. It's almost as though everything is more intensified by how much data is sucked up by any activity I do. Things to note, I've formatted, I've gone back to Windows 8...somehow the issue still persisted so I went back to Windows 8.1, exact same thing. 20Mb per hour. I've shut off live tiles, I've pretty much uninstalled all the apps. I've looked through the task manager, processes running, app history ect ect. Nothing showing that my data was being sucked up by anything. I even went to the wi-fi section under performance in there and it shows everything is a big fat 0% for network usage. 0.00Mbps, yet when I mouse over the network name at the bottom right of the screen that number quickly enough adds up. Any thoughts would be well appreciated. I haven't found anyone who can figure this out, I mean it can't be a virus or malware because I had the same issue when I've formatted. The only other thing I've done lately that's different over the past 3 years I've been on this turbo hub for internet is I recently switched from a private IP to a public IP address so that my Nat type would be 2 and not 3 for my PlayStation 3 and for Call of Duty on the PC. Somehow I doubt that's the cause but at this point I'm willing to believe anything.
 
Solution
You could install a firewall like zone alarm free and that will ask every time a program wants to go on the internet for the first time.

i found a chart that says if you visit 250 websites a month it's 7.30GB

YOUTUBE VIA SAFARI
(HQ) 3-4 mb per minute. 180-240 mb per hour
(LQ). 2mb per minute. 120 mb per hour

BBC IPLAYER
4 to 4.5mb per minute. 240 to 270 mb per hour

Facebook 15mins with no video streaming 5MB

Web Browsing 100 web pages 20MB
Web Browsing 1 hour 26MB

At guess i think i would rack up 1gb a day just on websites.

Did some counting and it looks like i'm using 1mbit a min idle so 60mb an hr. 60 Megabits = 7.5 Megabytes (MB) 10 hrs = around 1GB a day idle.:ouch:

wa4wb9.jpg


Philminator

Honorable
Sep 8, 2012
30
0
10,530


Yes as I mentioned I've already looked there and mines at 0 kbps yet I'm sucking up 20Mb per hour :(

 

allennnn

Honorable
Nov 25, 2012
306
0
10,860
With it being a new install i would say windows updates but that what would show up in resource monitor. Any chance of posting screen shots?

Maybe its a hidden service sending data directly to the nsa.

2zzroe1.jpg
 

Philminator

Honorable
Sep 8, 2012
30
0
10,530
2yxhh1t.jpg

28l73ir.jpg

I am going to try to figure out how to post screenshots on here. I have 2 to see if we can figure out what is going on. In the meantime what does NSA mean? and so I guess it is safe to say that 20Mb per hour is not normal idling activity right? Then again as I said before everything is taking up more bandwidth it seems than normal. Wish me luck I'm about to try to post screenshot.
PS I been watching the open resource monitor under network and there's constantly 5-9 things running and then some disappear and come back. and they are all slowly sucking up my bandwidth. I just don't understand why I've never had this in my life before.
 

allennnn

Honorable
Nov 25, 2012
306
0
10,860


That looks normal to me very low dose it jump higher than that apart from IEexplorer?
 
He was joking

Load software called wireshark. It will let you do exactly what the NSA does. It captures every packet sent and received by your machine. You can then run reports and see exactly what sites are using how much bandwidth. Still looking at what you posted it appears to be mostly the browser. Try to close all the IE windows when you are not using the machine. There are some sites like say CNN that always update but it takes very little bandwidth. The most common reason people see stuff like this is they are running or did run a bit torrent download. Lets assume a legal one for say a game that is distributed via torrent. Sometime the client stays running to give other users parts of the file. The indicator would be large amounts of uploads when you are not using the machine.

Still wireshark will definitely show you the traffic finding the process that is doing it may be a little harder if it isn't something real common.
 

Philminator

Honorable
Sep 8, 2012
30
0
10,530
oh ok I'm half asleep and I was like wow what does the NSA want with me now lol. As for youtube I never really do any youtube for obvious reasons except for the odd 2 min clips here and there. As for my IE windows when I'm running 20Mb per hour that's with absolutely nothing running. I haven't even installed any of my games or nothing yet. I will try that wireshark program when I wake up. Just about to go to bed now. Thanks for the feedback so far. Will be back in about 8-9 hours
 

Philminator

Honorable
Sep 8, 2012
30
0
10,530
about to load wireshark in the next 30 min or so to see what's going on. Looking forward to seeing if I can stop the excessive bandwidth consumption. Just a few more months and I'm moving away from the country back to the city so I'll have unlimited 150Mbps speeds. after 3 years of 1Mbps 10GB internet at 80$ I can hardly wait. Will post an update if I notice anything on that program
 

Philminator

Honorable
Sep 8, 2012
30
0
10,530
.[/quotemsg]

That looks normal to me very low dose it jump higher than that apart from IEexplorer?
[/quotemsg]

sorry I just saw this now, not really no IEexplorer doesn't jump much is the svchost or whatever and a few other random things that pop up. How much data per hour are you guys sucking up idling after an hour? as I mentioned before I used to be at 20mb per hour if I was playing world of Warcraft and on facebook, now I get 20mb per hour doing absolutely nothing
 

allennnn

Honorable
Nov 25, 2012
306
0
10,860
You could install a firewall like zone alarm free and that will ask every time a program wants to go on the internet for the first time.

i found a chart that says if you visit 250 websites a month it's 7.30GB

YOUTUBE VIA SAFARI
(HQ) 3-4 mb per minute. 180-240 mb per hour
(LQ). 2mb per minute. 120 mb per hour

BBC IPLAYER
4 to 4.5mb per minute. 240 to 270 mb per hour

Facebook 15mins with no video streaming 5MB

Web Browsing 100 web pages 20MB
Web Browsing 1 hour 26MB

At guess i think i would rack up 1gb a day just on websites.

Did some counting and it looks like i'm using 1mbit a min idle so 60mb an hr. 60 Megabits = 7.5 Megabytes (MB) 10 hrs = around 1GB a day idle.:ouch:

wa4wb9.jpg


 
Solution

Philminator

Honorable
Sep 8, 2012
30
0
10,530

hmmm so basically this is "normal" what I am experiencing. The only mystery will be why this never happened until about a week or so ago. I'm constantly on facebook or should I say leaving it in the background running and playing World of Warcraft and I would be lucky if I went past 20-25Mb in an hour. I tried wireshark, I just don't really understand it yet. I just woke up so lol. I remember Zone Alarm, might give that a shot as well. So with absolutely nothing running you also idle at about 60Mb an hour? :( may just have to live with it 1-2 more short months before I move back to the city with normal internet, then it won't matter if it's 60 GB an hour! :D back in a bit gonna try to figure this wireshark thing
 

Sur127

Honorable
Dec 19, 2013
1
0
10,510
Hey even I am facing the same problem with my new windows 8 laptop. Mine is around 50mb per hour. I have disabled all updates and have tried out many options. Also read about the metered connections setting, but I don't find any options like that in my network settings. Let me know if you figured it out..
 

macca316

Honorable
Jan 8, 2014
1
0
10,510
Hey guys,

I also just bought a new laptop with 8.1 and it is chewing through my Ethernet and we are at a work camp where we only get 250MB a night and I cant even use the internet for 2 hours without getting blocked.

Has anyone found out a way to solve this problem? a reply will be much appreciated

Cheers
 

Kewlx25

Distinguished
I loaded up WireShark and saw about 35kb/s of primarily broadcast packets from other customers in my subnet. Saw some MAC addresses from ASUS, Belkin, Apple, Dell, Cisco, Netgear, and a few others that I can't remember.

That's about 4KB/s or about 14MB/hr
 

SahandS

Reputable
Apr 14, 2015
1
0
4,510
after weeks of searching and paying extra for the internet, I have reached the following solution.
it has worked for me so far. I hope it works for you guys as well:

control panel > Network and Sharing Center > Change Adapter settings > right click the connected adapter > properties > remove the "internet protocol version 6" tick

I still don't know why this works for me. what matters is that it works.

good luck.
 

connectitcath

Commendable
Jun 20, 2016
1
0
1,510
Same problem too.. Philminator .. got 250mB in 2 hours! I only used facebook, and has tempted to try to play the Beta but it failed to load... so I closed it, decided to do something else, leave the laptop alone, but I noticed it didn't stop loading data! I don't know what's sucking all this data. Been observing it for 3 months, thinking there was just an adjustment related to my service provider, but it's like c'mon men, I paid for this data. And when I reached the given allocations, they would send me a message telling me about the Fair use policy and would put on hold my browsing. I was thinking of reformating Windows, but as Philminator had tried it already, I think it won't work too.

Sahands, tried that but it never works.

Please I need help about this. This is injustice. lol