TekSavvy → Usage gone crazy?

Hi all. On 15/10 DSL with 300 GB/mo. Usually we use almost all of the 300 GB during the month. Strangely, we received a "75% used" email yesterday (the 7th of the month). When I log into My Account, it shows that we've used over 200 GB, but I know we have not.

I have double checked, and our downloads/torrents are at about 60 GB so far for the month, and I can't see any unauthorized users on our WiFi who would be gobbling data.

I can't figure this out. It simply does not make sense that our typical usage is 300 GB per month, but we've already used 75% just one week into this month. Is anyone else experiencing bloated usage reporting? Any help is appreciated.

Hey there,

I would definitely suggest getting some kind of bandwidth tracker. If you are seeing usage that doesn't quite match what we see when you're running a tracker, please let us know!

Thanks,

TSI Kris

EDIT:Heh, it would've helped if I specified to let us know in »/forum ··· avdirect like Jonathan mentioned below. Woops!

That's what I'm doing... lol.

Our network server (which houses our torrents) is reporting only 60 GB of downloads so far for the month. Our other devices are iPads and the like, no big downloads even possible.

How do I put a tracker into my Sagemcom 2864 to verify local usage directly?

Hi Davecool,

If you could please post in the direct forum with your account information. We will then gather some more information from you and investigate this further.

Cheers,

TSI Jonathan

Unfortunately the Sagemcom is not capable of doing this. You need an external 3rd party router, most high end routers have this now with stock firmware, and if not there are 3rd party firmware that allow usage logging as a whole, or per device.

I'm currently awaiting the results of last month's investigation for me. Knowing I was going to use a whole lot, I did my downloading mostly from 2 am to 8 am, but I ended up seeing a 50gb discrepancy between their tool and my own. Fortunately, I've got months of to-the-second logs, I ended up sending off a huge netbalancer log and am now awaiting results.

Although most months I only use 150-200 gigs of the peak usage, I actually noted to a tech a couple months back that the tool seems to have small errors around the 2 - 8 am window... I wonder sometimes if there's like a machine/router/tool or something somewhere on the rogers network stuck in the wrong timezone or something, that throws up the odd, intermittent logging error.

If you can't do it on the router you have, consider installing netbalancer (free) onto your various computers. It gives you a log of every byte in and out of the computers, what service is using them, and you can use it to shape your traffic to prioritize games > downloads for example, or make rules like more speed from 2-8 am for example, when things are free.

Hi FatalX,

Your detailed logs were absolutely excellent and if there's a problem, those kind of logs are great for helping us find them.

Is there a Mac equivalent? Our networked computers are all Apple, including the iPhone and iPad. The built-in tools on the Macs only show the total network usage (including computer-to-computer), not just the internet.

Just an update. Since I posted yesterday the usage shows an increase of 50 GB. What on Earth. Lol. This is craziness.

Do you have a Smart TV? Does the device list in your modem match your actual devices?

Never had a mac... but some quick google-fu brings up a couple of similar free products for mac:

Surplus Meter (seems similar, freeware)

Entonnoir

Throttled Pro

There are definitely some snags we were working out in terms of the usage- it is something we're working on and in davecool's case the issue was found and is getting fixed.

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these situations really suck and this is one reason I went to unlimited. no worrying, no fuss or muss, download as much as I want when I want and top speed, no ztc here home-boy

Cases like this are the exact reason that bandwidth limits (instead of speed limits) are an entirely bad idea industry wide for ISP's.
Unfortunatly there is no perfect middleground or solutions in play.
There is no way teksavvy can get rid of caps with the current UBB charges/limit set on them. As they cannot afford to have people using their connections 'unfettered' in primetime.

The entire problems is a result of despite all upgrades being tax rebates/refund/ etc etc, the Monopoly communication companies refuse to properly upgrade in our country (much the same as in the USA).
We are dragging them kicking and screaming into the future, where they should be leading us to the future.

Support should be able to see data tracked on your PPPOE session. Back to whenever your modem last logged in.

You could power cycle your modem and then get support to check your data usage like 6 or 12 hours later. As long as the modem doesn't reboot / lose connection in between it should be a good snapshot. If the usage is higher than expected (which is probably what the result will be) then its time to try and check your devices. You should be able to get a data usage stat off of cell phones / tablets. Might have an app or two going crazy in the background that you aren't aware of.

If the data usage is not showing up on your pppoe session then it I would think that means something is just wrong with the usage tracking for you.

A reply in the direct forum indicated that my login (a @copperdsl account) was being double counted. Apparently it's being fixed now. Sounds like a good resolution of me.

It seems they might be turning it off altogether for the time being?

It is already off for me. June 10 is the last entry in my usage tracking. 0GB after that. Usage meter is quite broken IMO.

How can a bandwidth tracker that is so unreliable and pron to problems be used to base extra charges on?

Yeah.. I'm hoping after their investigation that they waive the overage on me from my disputed month. Three years never even close to going over.. and when I do, it doesn't match my own records. I haven't heard from them in a while on it.. maybe by the time I come back from vacation I'll have heard what's up.

I understand their need to have a cap, with the way they're charged by the telcos, but I would prefer better tools, and more accuracy (IE, hour by hour breakdown at least).

Hmm... It seems like my usage is almost double-counted too (~1.75x for both upload and download), starting July 1. Much of June was tracked fairly accurately, but TSI's usage counter reported a lot of zeros before early June. I've only been tracking my usage daily at 4am, so the correlations aren't entirely precise until I collect more detailed data.

How is the usage in My Account reported?
e.g., does "On peak July 2" mean (0:00 - 2:00 plus 8:00 July 2 - 0:00 July 3), (8:00 July 2 to 2:00 July 3), or (8:00 July 1 to 2:00 July 2)?

I also see unusual data since 3 day... 50GB/days. Wifi is secured, I need to check my setup...

Edit: Seeing ALOT of dns traffic to dns.pppoe.ca/dns2... 5-10mbps!?

Edit2: Traffic is on the router itself (openwrt) nothing is fowarded to lan, and started on july 11

Do you start your downloads right at 2 a.m. or something like 2:15 a.m.? Also, what download utilities with scheduling are you using?

I manually started them right at 2 am, used netbalancer to throttle them down to nothing at 8m for about a week straight. In the end, I actually just got my email back from them saying there was nothing further they could do, no credit back on that $25 overage or anything.. despite also telling me in their email that their numbers match up with my .csv logs for the disputed dates..... how's that for confusing.

Sooooo, yeah, unfortunately after being with teksavvy for so many years, and having just bought a modem and gone to 150/10... look like I'm going to be going to be jumping over to start's 150/15 $90 dollar 400gb tier, so paying 5 bucks more a month (since I'll loose my referrals). Hell, I just sent over another new referral last week... Actually... I should see if she's called, since Start has the $25 referral thing too.

Hi FatalX

Can you post a thread in Direct please? We would like to check into this further for you.

Thanks.

I can, although the last email seemed pretty straightforward and brief:

"Thank you for the response. I have looked into this issue with a supervisor and we've calculated the information provided with the CSV along with the information on our end and see that the data matches up.

Unfortunately we would not be able to issue a credit or refund for the overage use for the month of June. We apologize for any inconvenience that may cause."

Understood.

We would just like to have a second review of it (once we have your account info).

Thanks.

Fair enough, made a direct post.

*edit* was resolved to my satisfaction in the direct forum. I'll be monitoring any large downloads from 2-8 am in the coming months for discrepancies, to help out with the monitoring tool, though I will be back to using my usual 150ish gigs a month (76 so far 15 days into the month).

OK thanks. I will have a look at it now, and update your there shortly.