been having a slow connection latley so rang virgin up and they were quite distant at first and said im going to have to check on something anyway 7 mins later they came back and asked if i use my internet for business use i replied no why, they then told me that my account had uploaded 18gb of data in just 5 days and in the last 14 days have uploaded 32.8 gb of data.

They want me to run some tests tomorrow before 4 but they said they have not come across this amount of data being uploaded from a residential account. They asked about my wireless router security settings which i told them is set to use wpa 2.

What could cause this massive amount of data being uploaded not downloaded I have only uploaded a few pictures onto my facebook page and listened to some music on spotify. The young lad watches video clips on cbbc website and my other lad has the od online game installed but these just download data and not upload.

I asked what download usage was and they said just over 4 gb from the begining of November so where the heck is this 18gb of uploaded data in just 5 days coming from. Just wondered if anyone here can help - cheers.

Edited 8 November, 201015 yr by justinbarrow

Just to add we don't have any consoles like x box or playstation 3 that can go on-line, Our eldest son says he has quake 3 which is an on-line game installed but that's all. Really need to find out what's causing this large amount of data to be uploaded.

The only thing I can think of that generates that degree of usage would be filesharing software (eg Bittorrent clients) remaining active in the background and allowing others to pull data from your machine. Giving access to films would be a prime candidate.

Edit: Just to clarify - that's thinking aloud and not an accusation.

Edited 8 November, 201015 yr by Interphase

Someone hacking in on your network?

Someone hacking in on your network?

How can i find out more about if i am being hacked - this may sound stupid but why would someone hack into a network to upload wouldn't it be the other way round and that they would use it to download.

I don't have anything like bit torrents running in the background or at least something im not aware of. the computers all seem to be running ok speed wise its just download speeds are poor with speedtest.net reporting 0.92 mb and virgin say i have not been capped.

thanks for the help on this.

Which router do you have? Some of them provide fairly decent logs, and you can also check the DCHP client list for host names

Rather than hacking your network (which is pretty unlikely given WPA2)  it'd be more likely that some malware got onto the machine, allowing an outsider to use it as a store. DO you have a firewall that'll report outgoing connections as well as incoming? You could see if there are any processes asking to connect that you can't identify.

The final thing would be to stick a bandwidth counter on there and see what's happening - if it's coming from your PC or someone elses. If it can log the sources too, so much the better.

Could also have some kind of malware, my brother discovered his pc being used as an FTP server once after a piece of dodgy software got on his machine.

Switch off all your pc's and look at the cable modem/router traffic lights (TX/RX) and they should be pretty much inactive.

Sounds like malware to me as well. Get scanning every machine with something like malware bytes, i have also been getting some good results with microsoft security essentials recently as well so may be worth a punt.

VM should be able to tell you exactly what sort of traffic you have been uploading and on which ports.

It's either someone else using your connection for filesharing - look at the logs on the router to see who is connected - or your machine has been infested with malware and is uploading lots of data.

Thanks guys, would kaspersky internet security pick up anything malware? or am i just better off downloading malware bytes. I will call virgin media again later to see if they can tell me what sort of traffic it is.

What would be the data being uploaded be, would it me files on my machine or something else - its a bit above me all this. I will keep you posted.

It's either someone else using your connection for filesharing - look at the logs on the router to see who is connected - or your machine has been infested with malware and is uploading lots of data.

this..

Do you use wireless?

Also if you have a look in task manager as soon as the computer has finished booting up.. (right click on the taskbar/task manager) and have a look at the processes tab.. see if theres anything in the list that stands out for using a fair bit of CPU or memory.. if its malware, its usually badly written so will keep your cpu useage high..

defo agree with running a malware scan though!

If you really want to cover yourself, Change the router password, & put a mixture of numbers, with upper & lowercase letters to secure it.

If you really want to cover yourself, Change the router password, & put a mixture of numbers, with upper & lowercase letters to secure it.

Already done that as the router was still set to the admin default passwords I have also re-checked the mac filtering and changed the key to one that is 28 characters long. I am just about to do the tests that virgin have asked me to do, don't know what it will prove as they seem to be just speed tests.

Just used speedtest again and it comes back with this....I am confused as im not suppost to be getting more than 8mb connection. Looks good though

Here is the result after waiting a few mins after the above.

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Edited 9 November, 201015 yr by justinbarrow

 

What would be the data being uploaded be, would it me files on my machine or something else - its a bit above me all this. I will keep you posted.

If your machine is being used as an FTP server or zombie, the data would be anything placed there by the people or network controlling it. In theory you'd have noticed a spike in your download usage at about the same time the uploads started to clock up, through the machine being populated with content. There's not really any benefit in grabbing that amount of unknown data from a random machine.

Might be worth sticking Network on there ( http://www.softperfect.com/products/networx/) to get a handle on the numbers. You can also use the netstat page to see which apps are connecting out, and to where.

Isn't the BBC iPlayer a P2P application? Early versions certainly used Kontiki (kservices.exe).

My guess is that because it looks like you have 67Mb/s connection, it is allowing a larger number of connections.

I had a problem with Virgin this weekend. I was only getting 0.5mbs download so I called and they said they were in the process of moving people over to a new server, or something, to try and pick up speeds, so I can expect a disrupted service for a couple of weeks. :(

Could this mean they've moved your connection to a new server, or whatever it is, but wrongly connected you to another customers account??? I know nothing about the tech side of things so just throwing the idea out there.

Isn't the BBC iPlayer a P2P application? Early versions certainly used Kontiki (kservices.exe). 

The original app was, but they ditched it in favour of a platform independent website.. and in view of the government's complete lack of understanding over what P2P actually means with regards to it always being a bad thing..

Just used speedtest again and it comes back with this....I am confused as im not suppost to be getting more than 8mb connection. Looks good though

Here is the result after waiting a few mins after the above.

-

I want some of that download speed! I thought virgin were rolling out 100Mbps in some places.

Check the NAT sessions table/log in your router as that might point what is going on. Also my router breaks down session TX and RX traffic per IP address. When my lodgers used to use it too much I blocked them

I want some of that download speed! I thought virgin were rolling out 100Mbps in some places.

If only I was getting this, it takes around 7 mins to download an mp3 from Amazon downloads and even loading pages on the Briskoda site have slowed up

Just a thought, your slow downloads could be caused by the fact that your upload bandwidth is virtually non-existent (due to the amount of data being uploaded)

I put bit metre on all machines today and so far they the most uploaded data being reported is 36mb on one machine with the others arouns 24 and 28mb of uploaded data. Will still be watching.

I never really paid any detail to the upload speed being around 0.3mb what should it be, I know they say the upload side is usually slower than the download side.

I never really paid any detail to the upload speed being around 0.3mb what should it be, I know they say the upload side is usually slower than the download side.

I believe it's 0.5Mb on 10Mb packages, .75Mb on 20Mb package and 1.5Mb on the 50Mb package - they're supposed to be increasing them soon.

I put bit metre on all machines today and so far they the most uploaded data being reported is 36mb on one machine with the others arouns 24 and 28mb of uploaded data. Will still be watching.

I never really paid any detail to the upload speed being around 0.3mb what should it be, I know they say the upload side is usually slower than the download side.

If you're running it on a PC, and that PC has a rootkit that is sharing things from your PC, there is a fair chance it won't see the traffic. You really need to monitor it on the router.

I'd ask virgin to give you an update today, then unplug all computers from the system and turn off the wireless in the router. Once this is off you should get pretty much zero (apart from a few keep alive packets) over the connection.

If it isn't then there is a problem somewhere else. If it is zero then leave the wireless off and put each computer on the network for 24 hours then remove it and connect the next. Between changing machines check with virgin to find out your last 24 hour access and at some point you should notice something.

Again if nothing, remove all PCs and then turn on the wireless.

The only other thing I can think of is that the network is misconfigured so that all internal traffic goes via your address at virgin, but that would be pretty crazy.

The only other thing I can think of is that the network is misconfigured so that all internal traffic goes via your address at virgin, but that would be pretty crazy.

But then surely there would be about 30 odd GB of downloads too and the OP said that the downloads were only about 4GB...