Download limits

[Gymnophoria]

At this point, I don't know if I'll even be able to stay on staff because of this. We have a download allowance of 40gb per month. But last month we had 53gb downloaded and the past week we seem to have been going through about 2gb per day. Now I don't play games online, I don't watch anything or use YouTube, I don't download torrents or really, do anything that I think would contribute to the download limit.
However, my brother spends every night playing on xbox live and talking to his friends, if he's not doing that it's miniclip and he has told me that he "only" spends about half an hour a day watching YouTube videos.
Right now, my dad is getting close to just cutting off the Internet altogether because last month alone cost an extra £20 and we can't afford to keep paying that much. Can anyone tell me what actually contributes to this and how I can fix it? I've tried telling my brother to be careful and he just comes up with excuses and scoffs at me. Please help me! I hate it when my dad's in a mood.

[Amember]

Everything you do can just accumulate, it doesn't matter how much time you spend doing something it's how much you load within that times. I recommend you get some bandwidth software for every system in the house to monitor the network (unfortunately you won't be able to have such software for the 360). Then from there you can identify which system (if you have more than 1) that is hogging all your precious bandwidth. If your brother is playing Miniclip, Youtube and XBL then I can happily suggest kicking him off all together and watch the bandwidth per month be lower.

Also, I suppose it might be different up at Scotland price wise but it's much easier to be on an unlimited network. But if you can't afford that like I said a bandwidth monitoring tool is extremely handy to use. I don't personally use this, as I use a better one that requires to rule breaking to use. But this one I'm going to link is 100% and is recommended by ThinkBroadband which are a very good broadband source for information and tips: http://www.thinkbroadband.com/tbbmeter.html

Also, if your router can do this and someone in your household knows how, I'd keep an eye on the download cause the router should (if it's decent) log how much data it has downloaded and up loaded.

[Digilodger]

Originally Posted by Gymnophoria

Can anyone tell me what actually contributes to this and how I can fix it? I've tried telling my brother to be careful and he just comes up with excuses and scoffs at me.

I'm sorry if I'm asking obvious questions, but please understand that I'm living in the USA; I'm not familiar with things in Scotland. Please bare with me.

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Cannot you--or your dad--monitor and limit your brother's activities? Is there any law or policy over there that stop you or your dad from putting a bandwidth cap over your brother?

I think that's the easiest solution. If privacy is a concern, you can easily divide your network into two: One wifi-network for him, one wifi network for the rest of your family. You would then put a bandwidth cap on his wifi network alone; if he goes beyond that, he can't access the internet any more. Problem solved.


If you don't want to set up an extra network just for him, then you or your dad can just restrict some ports (especially whatever ports that his p2p software uses) and his ip address. Problem also solved.

If even that is out of question due to whatever law or policy you have over there, then you can also get on his computer and throttle the download and upload bandwidth of his computer alone. If his connection is slow enough, then he won't be able to download/upload as much. Problem also solved.

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Again, sorry if I'm asking obvious or ridiculous questions. I'm not living in Scotland; I'm not familiar with the laws there.

It's just . . . well, if he's keep going over his limits, then put a bandwidth cap on him to stop from going over the limit. If it's his fault, then punish him alone; why the entire family? I don't see any reason to go to the extreme of cutting off your entire household's internet altogether. Your dad is really over reacting here.

[JKmadu619]

53gb in bandwidth?

That's nuts. I used Xbox live five hours a day every day over summer and reached 12GB.

Viewing sites isn't the issue,mdownloading is downloads accounted for half my bandwidth despite me only downloading a few files. He can play online but he shouldn't be downloading any full length games.

Thank God Canada outlawed our bad with caps.

- Justin

[Gymnophoria]

Thanks for your replies. I downloaded the bandwith monitor just to see if it was something I was doing. But my dad's been logical about it all. We've changed the password to the wifi in case it was hacking, it kept going up by 2gb a day so my brother stopped using his laptop for 24 hours and it still happened. It's not him, so it must be either me or the xbox.
It's been 7 days and we've used 14gb, but more than half of that has been uploaded, not downloaded. We reckon it's a virus that sends the whole hard drive of whoever's laptop to somewhere in an attempt to get personal details or something so I've updated my security and am scanning my computer just now. Hopefully this sorts things out, at least we have an idea of what's causing it at any rate. Fingers crossed!