[SOLVED] ISP Limited Data Cap!

[Tinibigz_1992]

Hello,

Lately my family and I have been coming closer to our data limit cap. We do use a lot of data but to reach a 1TB limit seems a little off to me. I am decent with computers and would like a software that will track the data that is coming and going so I can see if this amount is actually valid. They have recently improved the area's hardware with new wiring and different hardware and speeds have improved greatly but I don't know if this has any effect on how much my household would use.

91 percent used 936/1024 GB

Those are the only changes that have occurred and we have never even come close to 1TB of data before these changes.

Thank you for the help.

 

[bill001g]

That is a lot but if you have young children they can use massive amounts of data. I was surprised to watch how they use data, they watch a minute or so of a video or game and then move to another over and over. On a fast connection the video and game can download huge amounts in a very short time and kids have basically moved on watching only a tiny part of what was downloaded. I saw them blow a 60gb cell connection in 3 days.

You are kinda stuck when it comes to monitoring this.

You likely have a very fast connection..above say 250mbps. Some routers have some very basic monitor features and you can load third party firmware on others. The best is to use a function called netflow that logs data usage to another machine.

The unfortunate issue is if you use any of these feature the traffic must go via the cpu so it can analyses it and create reports. It takes a lot of cpu power which is why you use netflow to reduce it and offload it to a pc.
BUT the real issue is that even simple NAT traffic without any monitoring can overload the cpu. They have a special feature that bypasses the cpu and is how they get the fast speeds. If you disable this feature to force the traffic via the cpu you get capped at about 250mbps even on the fastest routers.

You are kinda stuck at this point. The are 2 common solutions. The best tend to be to use a dual nic pc and run it as a router. There are many free firewall/router unix images that are easy to install. You will likely have to use your current router as a AP connected to this server to provide the wifi.

The other option is to place a managed switch that has mirror/monitor abilities between the router and the modem. You would then capture a copy of all data going between the modem and the router. This may or may not be helpful. All the data would appear to come from the router so you would not really know which internal machine was doing it.

Also be aware with any monitor you will pretty much only get ip addresses. All data is encrypted via HTTPS so you might for example know they connected to google but you really don't know what they are doing.

 

[Tinibigz_1992]

That is a lot but if you have young children they can use massive amounts of data. I was surprised to watch how they use data, they watch a minute or so of a video or game and then move to another over and over. On a fast connection the video and game can download huge amounts in a very short time and kids have basically moved on watching only a tiny part of what was downloaded. I saw them blow a 60gb cell connection in 3 days.

You are kinda stuck when it comes to monitoring this.

You likely have a very fast connection..above say 250mbps. Some routers have some very basic monitor features and you can load third party firmware on others. The best is to use a function called netflow that logs data usage to another machine.

The unfortunate issue is if you use any of these feature the traffic must go via the cpu so it can analyses it and create reports. It takes a lot of cpu power which is why you use netflow to reduce it and offload it to a pc.
BUT the real issue is that even simple NAT traffic without any monitoring can overload the cpu. They have a special feature that bypasses the cpu and is how they get the fast speeds. If you disable this feature to force the traffic via the cpu you get capped at about 250mbps even on the fastest routers.

You are kinda stuck at this point. The are 2 common solutions. The best tend to be to use a dual nic pc and run it as a router. There are many free firewall/router unix images that are easy to install. You will likely have to use your current router as a AP connected to this server to provide the wifi.

The other option is to place a managed switch that has mirror/monitor abilities between the router and the modem. You would then capture a copy of all data going between the modem and the router. This may or may not be helpful. All the data would appear to come from the router so you would not really know which internal machine was doing it.

Also be aware with any monitor you will pretty much only get ip addresses. All data is encrypted via HTTPS so you might for example know they connected to google but you really don't know what they are doing.

Hello,

Thank you for the info, I have tried to call my ISP to provide me a breakdown of the data usage and no luck with that either. I think I will try the nic PC setup and see what results I receive.

I am just shocked how much data is being used.

I do have a GB download speed and 250MB upload

Thank you for the insight.