Internet usage sky-high - can anyone think why this might be?

[BorisJohnsonsHair]

We appear to be using 6Gb a day on some days, often after midnight. We've ruled out any one of us actually using anything, so what else could it be? We have lots of wireless devicesbetween us, including phones, iPads, TVs, games consoles etc, none of which appear to be used in the middle of the night.

Just wondered if anyone else had had any problems with usage and how you managed to solve it? Any ideas most welcome

is your network password protected? any chance a neighbour is logging on to your broadband?

Are sure nothing is set to sync/download/update in the wee hours?

6gb a day is quite a bit,we are heavy users and average 3gb a day,could you turn your router off at night,however that wont solve the mystery of who or what is using a huge amount of data.

I think someone must be piggybacking you. That's a lot especially if not actually being used.

6gig after midnight sounds like a piggy backer, if you don't normally use it at night they will go on then so you don't notice the slowdown.

Why are you leaving wi.fi routers on all night anyway, not0 withstanding the whole wasting of power and increased risk of fire thing, no one knows if all these wireless signals being bombarded on us from all sides is safe or not.

As for your piggy back set your security and change your passwords, then see if they sod off chances are if you already have security on, they will be back in no time as there's no dutch thing as secure wifi.

6gig after midnight sounds like a piggy backer, if you don't normally use it at night they will go on then so you don't notice the slowdown.

Why are you leaving wi.fi routers on all night anyway, not0 withstanding the whole wasting of power and increased risk of fire thing, no one knows if all these wireless signals being bombarded on us from all sides is safe or not.

As for your piggy back set your security and change your passwords, then see if they sod off chances are if you already have security on, they will be back in no time as there's no dutch thing as secure wifi.

WiFi should be left on 24/7 because it takes the box up to 24hr to find a stable 'pipe' (think that is actually the technical term) each time it is turned on. Switching it off after 8hrs use is therefore impacting your quality of service.

Leaving it on is impacting my quantity of cash paid on bills, I'll continue to turn off all things when not in use.

It's not the wi-fi part that needs to be kept on HauntedLL, it's your connection to your ISP (assuming ADSL or ADSL 2+).

Switching off each night is fine for those who want to, but disabling the wi-fi (and/ or setting an encryption key using WPA or WPA2 [rather than WEP, if you can use WPA on everything]) is one way to stop any neighbour connecting to your ISP. It should be fairly easy to do, depending on which ISP you use, and whether they provided the router, or you bought your router separately.

If you switch the router off, each night, then yes, it will stop this 'unexpected' usage, but it will also suggest to the exchange that the line is poor and that will increase the signal to noise threshold which is required for connection. Doing that cuts the maximum speed you can download at, and impair your connection to some extent.

I'd suggest not turning a router off unless you are really concerned about the power consumption or risk of fire. Yes, I know I'd save a little in reduced electricity cost, but wouldn't switch it off myself... however, if I were you, I would be sure that the wireless connection has encryption enabled, and change it from time to time (in case someone has guessed it - eg using house / street name, football team name, or something else easily identifiable).

Switching the router off is what I was trying to refer to.

Thanks for all your replies. We're fairly certain it's not a neighbour using it, as they're all elderly and we know most of them (and they don't have PCs). We have passwords which are series of letters and numbers, so not easy to guess. Could the router be faulty do you think? Or could it be a virus of some sort?

Are you sure that one of the devices aren't doing an auto update/syncing thing at a regular?

How do you know you are using over 6GB?
I think if you are router aware then you should probably ensure that it is locked down with the encrypted keys, also you can ensure that it only gives out a certain amount of IP addresses to your equipment, and these can be set per device too.
If you know the admin log in to your router, it's best practise to get it changed - and stop it from broadcasting its ID - which can help stop strangers getting into it. Even if you encrypt the wireless settings, if someone has the password to the admin console on your router, they can bypass the security.
HTH

Which devices are on more than off ?

I'm guessing that you don't leave games consoles on 24x7, but might switch TVs to 'standby', and so on.

I'd suggest changing the settings in (for example) your TVs and any TV-related kit (eg Sky ? box, which might be downloading 'anytime' programmes even if you never watch them and didn't even want to use it)... so for example choose a new wireless password, set it in some items each day (ie so they CANNOT connect until finally you change the p/w on the router) and see if the usage goes down one night.

Which ISP are you using? Some give more detail than others... Are you able to identify particular hours of high usage vs low usage?

Could any machine have a Torrent share running (aka Peer-to-Peer) ?

If you were spamming (sending out junk e-mail, because of a virus) then eventually your ISP might threaten to disconnect you.

Many desktops / laptops have network / system monitor software as standard, so you should be able to get some idea of data traffic (on Windows, there's the Task Manager, and my old iMac has Activity Monitor). When you are off to bed, you could ensure your systems 'sleep' (rather than just run a screen saver and blank the screen) so as to be sure your kit isn't causing the traffic.

No suggestions for how to monitor tablets and anything without a proper desktop / command line. It's where cables (with frantic LED flashing) have slight advantages over wireless when detecting what is/ is not working (!)

(I started in the early 80s with a network running on PCs on our dining room table and find wireless gives regular headaches when trying to fault find.)

Oh yes, if you go the encryption key change method, and have changed the keys on every device but the router, you can then be sure either the router is up the creek (some can run software so maybe a virus planted there!) or someone outside using your connection.