Very Unusual High Internet Usage Recorded - Customer's Fault?

[bl1688]

Just want to share a long story...it happened just a few days ago but I think I may not the only person who had experienced this ...

One day, got the warning of reaching 100% of data usage of my Internet service. 

Completely shocked because it was only the 6th day into a new monthly cycle.  Immediately logged into www.rogers.com to check data usage.  WOW, 160+ GB on a particular day... yes, in one day!

How could that happen...?  I asked myself.  Turned on all (3) PCs in the house and checked the DU Meter on each.... none registered anywhere close to even 1G on that day, let alone 160G!  Very unusal but I had a hypothesis....

Picked up the phone and called Rogers tech support. 

Got into the waiting queue... and believe it or not, listented to music and waited 10+ mins, then it went to completely silent.... dialed again... finally someone picked up the call...when it was my 3rd attempted call.

Communicated of what I found... the 160G usage in one day.  Asked if he knew something had gone wrong that day at his (Rogers) end.  He said none. 

Then he got into my modem, and took no time, immediately said that my Wifi password was not good.... and he suspected someone could have hacked into my Wifi and used it to 160G....  My first reaction was... wait... he could see my Wifi key?  Ok, he had access to the cable modem and it's also the Wifi router. 

Ok.... I said, but I would not agree with him on that.

He went on and commented that because the Wifi key I chose to use was only numeric... that was known to be very weak and could be easily cracked. 

Right... I used only numeric.  And I would have to agree with him if I was using WEP, and the key was short...  But using WPA2 with only AES, 16 digit-long random numeric, and the encryption key renew every 1 hour.... (for those who know... do you think you can crack that using your computer?)  He insisted, in his personal opinion, that Wifi key was the problem...i.e. my fault.

Of course, once he had that in his head, there was nothing else he would consider.  Since I disagreed, the discussion became hot, and it went nowhere.  I became upset and he went on asking why I was upset.  Why I was upset?  I should not but I was very . off.

Let me be honest, he was not acting rude or anything like that... in fact, he was calm and was very sure about what he said.  So I decided to hang up.

To make the long story short... today, I had a Rogers service appointment... because the home phone and Internet services were up and down like a yo-yo in the past several days.  A tech came and found that the signal was very poor coming into the house, and later on, it was determined that the Rogers hub outside serving the street, was damaged due to the very recent thunder storm.

Hmmm.... hold on... that (thunder storm) was on the same day that the 160G usage was reported.... is that a coincidence?  I don't know.

Just went to www.rogers.com to check my accounts and usage..... and saw that Rogers had reset the data usage (not really 0, but set to 1M)  for the few days around the period that the 160G was logged!

Why? 

I know why.  They've used very weak password on their system, and someone might have hacked in, and reset the usage from 160G to 1M.  Of course, that's just my joke and it can't be true.

But why they went to reset the usage to 1M for those few days? 

***edited labels***

[jszentir]

a_n_s,  

your WAN receiving and sending totals clearly show that you have NOT used that much... the LAN uptime shows 15 days and your LAN stats are consistent with your WAN stats... assuming that the spike occurred during that 15 day period, it implies that your router i.p. address may have been hijacked somehow... or it could be a runaway process or some hiccup somewhere

i would explain to customer service that the spike is way excessive beyond your router totals... don't reboot your router... take screenshots daily if you can to corroborate the fact that something outside of your router is using up bandwidth

customer service can open up a ticket for the back office to investigate... they should give you unlimited at no charge until they figure it out

[Datalink]

Can you log into your modem, navigate to STATUS.....DOCSIS WAN, copy the downstream and upstream tables and paste them into this thread.  Those are the RG6 cable signal levels and signal to noise ratios. 

[jszentir]

needforspeed,  

you need to show your WAN and LAN total usage along with your WAN and LAN uptime... if the totals are lower than the usage charged to your account, clearly its not coming from your router... that's enough to make your case with customer service... and frankly, the technician should have checked that

don't reboot your router... you can phone in to tech support... have them look at the readings on your router and document it on the account including total usage and up time

[Gdkitty]

Thats one thing i have never tested... but your thing about rebooting has brought up.

Does rebooting, reset the usage WAN counter?

[jszentir]

yes rebooting resets all the readings... usage and uptime

[Gdkitty]

Good to know.

I have only had to reboot mine ONCE since i got it, so wasnt something i had tested 🙂

So that is an IMIPORTANT thing to remember for anyone who is TESTING and wanting to compare their usage.. and use that to fight with rogers, etc on the usage thing.

DO NOT reboot your router, unless you absolutely have to.. for keeping the better record of wan usage vs recorded usage. Its a VERY good tool for record keeping purposes.

Thank you for bringing it up 😄

[jszentir]

Has anyone ever heard of this story?

http://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/1uoobz/60_gigs_of_usage_came_out_of_nowhere_so_i_called/

Looks like its not happening

http://globalnews.ca/news/1072758/rogers-denies-charging-internet-customers-for-traffic-that-doesnt-...

but... there were many complaints

in any case, that's not the issue here as these spikes don't seem to be appearing in the router stats

i have to say though that this is very disconcerting for any customer to have to be stressed out over this... Rogers needs to come up with a procedure to ensure that customers don't get billed for these spikes... i've sent in a concern through the rogers.com contacts page and i encourage anyone else to do so... no one should be paying for these extreme spikes

[Datalink]

Those links are old news.  There is a thread somewhere on the forum concerning that topic.

[Gdkitty]

Yes, that was Very old... and alot of false claims.

I have used all the rogers D3 modems, other than the CGN2.. and never had an issue it counting any internal traffic.  And i move GBs sometimes daily, across them from my one PC to server.

Right around the time that the reddit post came out, i was on the same modem at the time.
I was in the process of moving my MEDIA SERVER PC info to my combined server.  I moved about 1.5tb worth of stuff.
I didnt get charged for it.

If anything the users in those threads, were experiencing what the people currently are (mac cloning or what ever other issue)

[barry19]

Total usage: 177.41  GB , Remaining: 180 GB, Downloaded: 2.46 GB , Uploaded: 0.13GB

New cycle starts in 27 days   . This doesn't make sense. Please assist.

[Gdkitty]

A) Unplug, disconect (for wireless stuff), etc everything inside of the house that is connected.  
JUST to eliminate anything internal in which could be causing it.
(its not completely unknown for CLOUD syncing on things, etc.. to get caught in a loop and continually keep trying and re trying to download / sync stuff)

B) Change your wifi password, etc.. make sure its strong, etc.. to make sure its not someone leaching off your wifi

B) As been mentioned in this thread before.. there is a chance of it being someone else with a MAC cloned modem.. using your usage, while on another another connection alltogether.. their modem appearing to be yours.  Best bet may be to swap your modem at your closest rogers store.

[Vlad1]

I'm running files upload (security images), no download happens. So Rogers takes my upload bandwidth (which is mesaured correctly), multiplies it by 10 (download speed 10 times upload), - and gets download bandwidth, which I don't use. It is ridiculos. They investigating this issue for two weeks (or longer) by now and no resolution so far. They should stop outsourcing development - cheaper developers doesn't neccessary mean smart developers.

[Robie1]

Same thing happened to me last month, 29 GB of usage in one day, and no one was home half of that day. I am the only user, with one laptop and one phone on the network. I was charged  $2.00 /GB, they said they can't explain it?  Tried to reset my modem password,  couldn't access my modem setup, neither could rogers. They said they can't see my modem on their network???????

And the story goes on.....

[RogersCorey]

Good morning @Robie1,

If we can't see your modem from our end, then we must do some additional troubleshooting to resolve find out why. We may need to send out a tech in this case.

Please PM us @CommunityHelps and I will further assist. Thank you.

RogersCorey

[Gdkitty]

If you read back through this thread..
My guess is that its likely 'MAC cloning'

Especially if they are having issues accessing your modem.. may be more issues that the cloned modem is still on the network somewhere and then rogers end is having issues because there are two of them out there.

Best bet would be to go in and swap your modem.

[Robie1]

Ty, I'll make sure to do that first.

[TO4]

I've pretty much had it with Rogers. I've a related yet unique issue. 

I've had Rogers Ultra Lite package for over 6 years.

For years I worked from home and was on the computer all day ever day... never even hit 75% of my usage. I do not watch movies, videos, download much... it is stictly used for email and work files.

All of a sudden after years of stable behaviour in 2015 after I had gone back to working outside the house and used the computer about 20% as much as previously, almost every month I get overage charges, often getting notices of 75% or 100% usage a couple of weeks into the billing period. Nothing has changed other than my actual use has gotten lighter, now the computer is only being used for email and looking at the odd web site. I have spoken to Rogers about this numerous times (after hours on hold etc), and they can provide no answer or ideas. 

Very frustrating!

[theresbob]

My internet usage is seldom more than 60 gigs, almost like clockwork.  Twice recently I have hit 83 megs and Rogers has billed and penalized me.  More and more pages are streaming their information of which I have no control.

I take great issue with Roger's billing me for overuse.  If this is the case, then, I should be receiving credits for my normal under-usage, as I would think any excess is being sold to other users.  At some point, whether dedicated server or disc segment, this unused space is being utilized, and for that I should expect a credit. 
As no one ever answers these questions,just invoices outrages amounts.

[gp-se]

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@theresbob wrote:

My internet usage is seldom more than 60 gigs, almost like clockwork.  Twice recently I have hit 83 megs and Rogers has billed and penalized me.  More and more pages are streaming their information of which I have no control.

I take great issue with Roger's billing me for overuse.  If this is the case, then, I should be receiving credits for my normal under-usage, as I would think any excess is being sold to other users.  At some point, whether dedicated server or disc segment, this unused space is being utilized, and for that I should expect a credit. 
As no one ever answers these questions,just invoices outrages amounts.

---

@theresbob

They won't credit you for under utilizing your plan, it's just like cell phones, you don't get a credit for not using all your minutes or data. Personally I believe every home internet plan should be unlimited usage, it used to be unlimited until a few years ago. My advice is to call into Rogers and ask if they have any promotions for unlimited internet usage, you'd be surprised at the discounts on some plans. 

[Gdkitty]

Its more than a few years ago.. your probably looking at 6 or more.. since they went metered..
But your also looking at BIG differences in SPEED too, was like 8m+ then for your mid tier.. which is now like 75mbps.

I do agree.. that all should be unlimited to start... but thats a whole other argument.

Yes, you really have no control of what the sites stream to you.. and this is one thing that MANY are not aware of when using things.. that how much usage they may actually BE using.
Streaming a youtube video to a small window, it cant take up that much?  Sure it can.. if its a 4k vid, uses a LOT, regardless of what size you view.
Even a simple thing as leaving a web page open on a machine.. if that page is reloading adds, etc.. that will all take up usage.

Unfortunately, any usage, used by their devices are their responsibility.
People on metered connections almost need to make sure that devices are completely off, etc when not used.

[theresbob]

I'm thinking a Rogers Community Expert is near enough to a Rogers employee.  I cannot think of a private individual who answers questions by referring the writer to contact Rogers and ask for more.

One is not able to discern when exact over usage is being arrived at.  It is Roger's obligation to not allow this by use of a "governor" (as in autos achieving certain speeds).  The user can then be asked if they prefer to go beyond the limit at that point.

Yes they currently flash a warning you are getting close...but how close?  The 80 meg should be capped, if not, this appears as though Rogers wants you to go beyond the limit.