As I am sure most of you are aware Comcast this August decided to incorporate a bandwidth cap of 250GB. This new regulation took effect October 1. The regulation states that if you use more than 250GB bandwidth in 1 month it is considered a Violation of the Acceptable User Policy. If you have 2 violations in a 6 month period your service will be terminated for 1 year. Now that you have the gist of the policy here is my issue. Back on October 27th I received a lovely letter in the mail stating I had violated the bandwidth cap. I had kept track of the data I used on my MacBook Pro (my main machine) using iStat Pro. The ussage on that machine was as follows- 10/1 - 3.22 GB 10/2 - 896 MB 10/3 - 2.1 4GB 10/4 - 961MB 10/5 - 284 MB 10/6 - 1.87 GB 10/7 - 3.48 GB 10/8 - 911MB 10/9 - 862 MB 10/10 - 1.54 GB 10/11 - 761 MB 10/12 - 176 MB 10/19 - 6.18 GB 10/20 - 1.62 GB 10/21 - 11.32 GB 10/22 - 1.98 GB 10/23 - 1.44 GB 10/24 - 6.98 GB 10/25 - 18.22 GB 10/26 - 320.3 MB 10/28 - 453.44 MB 10/29 - 2.34 GB 10/30 - 16.45 GB 10/31 - 15.23 GB If you round my usage UP to the nearest GB I was under 90GB of data transfer (this included local usage that wouldn't be counted by comcast). I couldn't see how I passed the 250GB cap with the occasional XBOX live maybe 3 times the entire month. I decided that I would by a Linksys WRT54GL router and flash it with the Tomato Software. I configured the router to act as a switch and connected that to my Main Airport Router along with my Modem. DIAGRAM: MODEM<==>Switch (Tomato)<==>Router<==>Wireless devices and ethernet devices In theory this setup would only measure data that came in and out of the WAN port on my router, ensuring that File sharing and my Slingbox wouldn't be counted towards the Tomato Bandwidth Monitor. When I went and checked my Usage the other day I was shocked to have seen this. The Big Green Chunk on the graph is about a 7GB file. I see one of these almost every day. The funny thing when this file came in I wasn't home. I have seen this happening in the middle of the night, middle of the day. Usually my computers are off when these files are being downloaded. I did not download any files. As a test I unplugged my Wireless router to make sure one of my neighbors hadn't cracked my password. Not to my surprise another large file was downloaded. The only thing I could think of was comcast was sending me this file for whatever reason. I am looking for any explanation as to why this would happen. If this continues I will have my phone internet and TV terminated for 1 year. I can't get DSL or satellite due to my location. I have contacted comcast twice. The only explanation they could give me was that my wireless signal was being stolen. Since I was able to rule that explanation out by turning the wireless off and the files still were downloaded I cant think of a reason for this happening. Any help would be appreciated. Domreis
Thats not the issue.... The files are coming in regardless if there are any computers turned on that are on the network.
This is what the graph should look like when it is just Normal browsing. This is what it looks like when there is a large files being downloaded. NOTE: All computers were off and the router was disconnected from the Switch that has the Bandwidth monitoring software on it. Thanks, Domreis
