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Punchy
join:2014-05-21

Punchy

Member

[DIRECTV] DirecTV HR44 downloading 100GB/day

I'm helping a friend with DirecTV HR44 DVR that is a serious bandwidth hog. He's got a monthly bandwidth limit of 350GB and normally has no problem with that. Late last week he got an email from his ISP (Suddenlink) that he was over the limit for the month already.
My first thought was that a PC had been infected and turned into a spambot or made part of a DDOS attack. However, looking at the ISP stats page, the data was all in the download direction.
I took over a router with Gargoyle firmware installed so we could identify the source, and it turned out to the the HR44. It is/was downloading 100GB per day for 3.5 days before we stopped it using a quota enforced by Gargoyle.
Customer support has no idea and forwarded the issue to the next level, but so far no response. He does not have any sort of VOD enabled, so was not expecting any downloads at all. Has anyone experienced this and do you know of a way to stop it (besides throttling/capping with a router)?
comp
Premium Member
join:2001-08-16
Evans City, PA
·Armstrong

comp

Premium Member

I have an HR44 and it downloads nothing a day.... guide data and all of that is downloaded over the sats. also not the network... does he have any genie clients? possible someone else is downloading? even still the downloads for VOD are small... sounds like something else.. he may want to try a reset everything
westdc
join:2009-01-25
Amissville, VA

westdc to Punchy

Member

to Punchy
Does your friend have Wifi? my hr44 is a dumb box and only downloads when I select something- Disconnect the internet from the hr44 and I bet your friend is still over his cap
Punchy
join:2014-05-21

Punchy

Member

Sadly we've already tried resetting it but the same behavior continues.
I'm 100% positive that the bandwidth is being consumed by the HR44. For one thing, it stops when we unplug the device. Secondly, Gargoyle firmware is designed to monitor and cap bandwidth on a per-device basis; it records the usage of each device on the local network (both wired and wireless) so we can see that the HR44 is the culprit.
My theory is that it is trying to download some sort of update / patch / application, failing, and retrying, in an infinite loop.

DarkLogix
Texan and Proud
Premium Member
join:2008-10-23
Baytown, TX

DarkLogix

Premium Member

is the HR44 acting as the deca bridge?

IE does it have the eth connected and are any other receivers depending on deca for internet?
ke4pym
Premium Member
join:2004-07-24
Charlotte, NC

ke4pym to Punchy

Premium Member

to Punchy
said by Punchy:

My theory is that it is trying to download some sort of update / patch / application, failing, and retrying, in an infinite loop

DirecTV receivers pull updates from the satellites. Not the interwebz.

Only VOD/Youtube/Pandora content should be coming from the internet.
comp
Premium Member
join:2001-08-16
Evans City, PA

comp

Premium Member

Correct and I mentioned earlier that it pulls guide updates and firmware updates from the sats. I would say either someone is using a genie client in a really bad way or the hr-44 is acting like a deca device for some other connection
Punchy
join:2014-05-21

Punchy

Member

No DECA bridge involved.

What Gargoyle captured during the large downloads is 2 IP addresses (205.128.65.253 and 206.33.35.252, both which map to Level 3 Communications). It also captured an access to directvapplications.122.2o7.net but I don't know if that was a large download or not.

DarkLogix
Texan and Proud
Premium Member
join:2008-10-23
Baytown, TX

DarkLogix

Premium Member

said by Punchy:

No DECA bridge involved.

You mean you don't have one or its not acting like one?

is it the only DTV receiver?
Punchy
join:2014-05-21

Punchy

Member

said by DarkLogix:

You mean you don't have one or its not acting like one?

Both? The only desktop computer in the house is connected directly via wired ethernet to the main router; every other device they have is mobile and uses WiFi. The HR44 itself also connects through a WiFi bridge to the router rather than through a true wired connection.
said by DarkLogix:

is it the only DTV receiver?

I believe there may be others. This is the only one that shows up on the network. Do "secondary" receivers pull their VOD through a main receiver?

Just how much VOD can be requested/downloaded at one time? 350GB should be over 175 hours of HD content. Can you say "download all Seinfeld episodes ever produced" and it will download them all at once?

They also have a GenieGo device on the network, but it shows little bandwidth usage, and my limited understanding of its purpose would say that its bandwidth would show up as uploads to the internet, not downloads from.
comp
Premium Member
join:2001-08-16
Evans City, PA
·Armstrong

comp

Premium Member

Thats the thing about the bandwidth with the Genie.. The VOD files are not that large so you would need to download almost every VOD there is for that size. Any Genie Clients pull there Data through the main Genie Can you switch the HR44 to ethernet and turn off the video bridge to see if something is up there?
westdc
join:2009-01-25
Amissville, VA

westdc to Punchy

Member

to Punchy
I would suggest they change there WIFI Password and see if that chnages anything
SemperFi78
join:2011-03-04
Marion, IA

SemperFi78 to Punchy

Member

to Punchy
Where does the Genie pull the Recommends content from that it auto records for you? Is that over satellite or internet? I know on mine it records alot of shows in the background. Could try disabling that feature to see if that is it.

DarkLogix
Texan and Proud
Premium Member
join:2008-10-23
Baytown, TX

DarkLogix to Punchy

Premium Member

to Punchy
If the HR44 is connected to the internet and shares coax with the other receivers then it is acting like a deca bridge
Punchy
join:2014-05-21

Punchy

Member

The other receivers are C41 mini clients that have no onboard storage; thus, that still can't explain the bandwidth consumed unless they were all on and streaming for 3.5 days continuously (which they weren't).

He discovered last night that the firmware date on the HR44 is exactly the same as the date that the high bandwidth consumption began. That appears to be the smoking gun...
comp
Premium Member
join:2001-08-16
Evans City, PA

1 recommendation

comp

Premium Member

Firmware updates DO NOT COME OVER THE INTERNET.. they are delivered from the Sat.. the C41's use the HR44 for storage and internet access(over DECA)
Punchy
join:2014-05-21

Punchy

Member

said by comp:

Firmware updates DO NOT COME OVER THE INTERNET.. they are delivered from the Sat.. the C41's use the HR44 for storage and internet access(over DECA)

No need to shout. I didn't say the firmware update came over the internet. The bug that is causing 100GB/day of downloads came from a firmware update delivered by Satellite. I thought that was the obvious implication of my previous post but apparently not.
comp
Premium Member
join:2001-08-16
Evans City, PA

comp

Premium Member

I received the 863 update the other day also and no issues with my HR44. I believe everyone here thinks the HR44 is not purposing downloading all that data.. someone is leaching through it or has the wifi bridge password
Punchy
join:2014-05-21

1 edit

Punchy

Member


bandwidth table
Click for full size
bandwidth graph
Okay, I'll try to demonstrate how it is that I am 100% certain it is not a theft-of-wifi issue. Gargoyle router software is ideal for this type of issue, which is why I set up my router at his house. The first attachment shows the bandwidth table for today. Gargoyle tracks bandwidth usage of every device that passes data through it. You can see that the HR44 has used 20+ GB already today (there was a cap of 20GB and then I set a separate cap of 1GB, after which the HR44 is throttled to 20KB/s).

If there were any unknown devices on the network consuming bandwidth, they would appear in this table. Unless someone went to the trouble to clone the MAC and IP of the HR44, and had the technology to stop stealing bandwidth when the HR44 was unplugged, I think this should suffice to show that there is no WiFi theft occurring. From a use case point of view, normal internet usage is not constant; if someone were stealing, they wouldn't be stealing at a fixed 1.2MB/s for 3.5 days.

The second attachment shows the last 24 hours' worth of bandwidth usage. The blue line shows the aggregate for the router; the red area shows that used by the HR44. A VOD movie was started at 8:30PM, and another at 10:30PM; there are usage changes corresponding to both of those events. However, that usage simply seems to continue forever (until it hit the 20GB cap around 5:30AM this morning).

So we know all the bandwidth goes through the HR44. What usage scenario can there be that shows this type of constant consumption for 3.5 days? Are there continuously-streaming HD channels that can be viewed through VOD? Could a neighbor somehow be using this magic deca bridge to get 24-hour TV viewing?

I just don't see any usage scenario, involving normal use or theft, that can involve continuous consumption at 1.2MB/s for 3.5 days, that happened to start exactly at the same time that new firmware was downloaded. That's why my theory at the moment is that the HR44 itself is continuously downloading something due to a bug in that firmware.

I don't have DirecTV myself, so I don't know what kind of things a user might do to download 350GB at one fell swoop, so that's why I'm looking here for a usage case that doesn't involve a bug. Is there a way to check pending downloads or current downloads? They haven't seen a decrease of 350GB in available space on the DVR, so I'm completely stumped.
corytv2
join:2013-10-21

corytv2

Member

I can 100% confirm this is real. I realized it out several days ago. I just subscribed to DTV after being gone for about 7 years.

Here's my ISP usage log for a few weeks:

»www.dropbox.com/s/cpx5hf ··· 2.07.png

The day it jumps from about 5 GB a day to 50 GB a day was the day I had my HR44 installed. The day it drops in half, and then back to 5GB was when I disconnected it from the internet. The day it jumps back up to 100 (!!!!) was the day after I plugged it back in.

I *ARGUED* with tech support that this was happening, and they weren't interested in hearing me at all. Is there anyone we can take this proof to?

I'm sick of arguing with techs who are idiots, and managers who think they know everything about their device, etc etc. It makes me want to cancel the service. I am trying to HELP them, and they are calling me an idiot.
Punchy
join:2014-05-21

Punchy

Member

By posting the issue on Twitter, my friend finally got to speak to a knowledgeable person that could assist with debugging. After uploading some diagnostic logs he confirmed that it did appear to be a firmware issue. He also noted that is rare for a customer to have so much diagnostic information available.

The solution was to do a "double reset" (reboot, wait until you have tv again then do another red button reboot). I hope that works for you!
corytv2
join:2013-10-21

corytv2

Member

It hasn't been a full 24 hour period for me, but it appears that reset>rbr did not work for me. I did restart the unit twice and plug it back in yesterday evening, and when I checked my ISP logs this morning, I was at 25GB yesterday, which is way more than my house usually uses. I'll leave it plugged in today, but I expect the usage to jump back up again.
corytv2

corytv2

Member

Confirmed. Double reset didn't work.


westdc
join:2009-01-25
Amissville, VA

westdc

Member

You are the only person having this problem Call D* and have the receiver replaced -explain it to them and setup a service call

DaveFL
@192.195.66.x

DaveFL

Anon

said by westdc:

You are the only person having this problem Call D* and have the receiver replaced -explain it to them and setup a service call

I have this happening too!!! I was seeing up to 50GB/day (5mbps connection) on my HR44-500. I'm pretty sure I have figured out the cause. If someone tries to download (watch) a VOD title from the HR44 or any of the connected C41-700s, it gets caught in an endless loop. The system never finishes downloading the VOD title. It will get to some random percentage complete and then start over. During this time, the HR44 consumes every bit of my available download bandwidth. If the VOD title shows up in the list, I can delete it and then the bandwidth instantly drops to nothing for the HR44. If the VOD title it is trying to download isn't in the list, I have to restart the HR44. Once the VOD title shows up in the list and starts to download again I can delete it. This is the only way I have found to stop the run-away downloading. VOD works perfectly from my HR23-700 and HR24-100 connected to the same network and ISP. My HR44 used to work fine with VOD. I'm thinking something got messed up in a recent firmware update on the HR44. D* has not been of any help. Their "solution" was for me to use the HR23 or HR24 to initiate VOD requests and then it was "OK" to watch them on the HR44 or C41s... I'm going to refrain from further comment on their awesome "solution"...

Thanks for any and all help!
-Dave
Joe12345678
join:2003-07-22
Des Plaines, IL

Joe12345678 to corytv2

Member

to corytv2
It's takes up to 24 hours for it to fully rebuild the guide data.
westdc
join:2009-01-25
Amissville, VA

westdc to DaveFL

Member

to DaveFL
reset the receiver- using your remote Menu-Setting- Restart receiver - enter (-) to confrim-

When the receiver reboots (tv picture comes back on) - Restart the receiver again.

That should take care of your issue

ropeguru
Premium Member
join:2001-01-25
Mechanicsville, VA

ropeguru to comp

Premium Member

to comp
How do you feel now that it is a confirmed bug??
comp
Premium Member
join:2001-08-16
Evans City, PA

comp

Premium Member

i dont feel anything since it was not confirmed.. No one else has had this issue on any of the directv or dbstalk forums

goober22
Resident Duh-Huh Member
join:2001-12-28
Panama City, FL

goober22

Member

Seems some have...

»www.dbstalk.com/topic/21 ··· loading/

Not that I have a dog in this fight, just sayin'.