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wavemaker
2nd December 2004, 10:08 AM
gooday all, having just got the adsl thingy happening, i spose i need to know how much i have used to make sure im getting my moneys worth. or do i. any info will be helpful as i know sod all abt it.

Fishman Dan
2nd December 2004, 10:22 AM
Wavey, what's your download limit?

Put it this way - 'normal' e-mail and web browsing will fit under any cap. It's only when you get to downloading files, and often that you can go over. From my stereotyping of you (;)) i don't think you fit into this category!

The other cause is for your PC to get hacked - this doesn't happen as often as some would have you believe, but it does happen! The attacker can then take advantage of your internet connection and utilise your cap - and the ISP takes no responsibility over it.

Your ISP will provide a link to check your monthly usage. Which ISP did you sign up with?

AndyP
2nd December 2004, 10:25 AM
Wavey, the guys have provided some help on this before, so have a look over these threads:
http://ozgolf.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=669

This might help you figure out what you are going to use it for:
http://ozgolf.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=997

They helped me to a certain extent. :roll: :wink:

wavemaker
2nd December 2004, 03:36 PM
thanks for the responses folks, its a 300 megabyut thingy and i have 206 left with saturday being the last day of the month. so im not going to go over my limit this month. i feel i should use more of it so i will have a look around to see what i can find, thanks again.

Ducky
2nd December 2004, 08:13 PM
I don't know how you guys can do it, I go absolutely nuts with downloading stuff. Just last month I used 24GB (of my 28GB limit) in just under 20 days (I was only churned over for 2/3 of the month).

:shock:

Kind regards,

Ben (Ducky).

Jarro
2nd December 2004, 09:20 PM
.. so what were you downloading Ducky :?: :wink:

Ducky
2nd December 2004, 09:59 PM
A bit of everything...

:P

Kind regards,

Ben (Ducky).

wavemaker
3rd December 2004, 10:09 AM
come on ducky, tell us.

markTHEblake
3rd December 2004, 01:40 PM
when i was working at an ISP , (australias first wireless) we had some users downloading 50gb a month. If you have ever heard the theory that 5% of users, use 75% of the bandwidth, you just have to see the reports to beleive it.

At the time, which was about yr 2000 i recall that this usage exceeded typical high end hard drives, so everyone was amazed what these people were doing, and where they were storing the data.

anyway we gave them 30 days to drop to 10gb, and the ones that didnt were bumped.

Fishman Dan
3rd December 2004, 02:14 PM
come on ducky, tell us.

I reckon he's got a virus and he's got nfi how to get rid of it ;) :lol:

Ducky
3rd December 2004, 02:22 PM
These are around the averages.

1 DVD = 4.7GB

1 Game = 2.5GB

1 CD = 200MB

1 VCD = 750MB

When you look at it this way, it's not hard to build up 24GB.

Not that I do any of that kind of stuff though...

:?


I reckon he's got a virus and he's got nfi how to get rid of it...
As if! Even ZeroCool himself couldn't get into this puppy!

:P

Kind regards,

Ben (Ducky).

clikchic
5th December 2004, 04:33 PM
Wavey, what's your download limit?

Put it this way - 'normal' e-mail and web browsing will fit under any cap. It's only when you get to downloading files, and often that you can go over. From my stereotyping of you (;)) i don't think you fit into this category!

The other cause is for your PC to get hacked - this doesn't happen as often as some would have you believe, but it does happen! The attacker can then take advantage of your internet connection and utilise your cap - and the ISP takes no responsibility over it.

Your ISP will provide a link to check your monthly usage. Which ISP did you sign up with?

He he, normal email and web browsing being the operative word! I am a member of quite a few email groups and get probably in excess of 200 emails a day. At busy times (and when lots of incredimail was used) I used to go over our then 3gb limit. I didn't do much downloading and only uploaded photos for ebay auctions. (uploads were included, bloody bigplonk)

I have also had trouble with the 3gb limit when there was a big virus out, can't remember the name of it now but I was getting something like 20-40-60 copies of the virus a day on average and it was eating my limit big time as each copy of the email was around 400-500kb in size! GRRR (thank goodness for Nortons!)

In the end I had to forward my mail to an email account that I could put filters on to filter out the virus emails! Very annoying! Bigpond were of course no help whatsoever! Granted if they had done something about it then they might have avoided the big crash they had not long after...

Anyway... rambling now.. can you tell I am bored???

Fishman Dan
5th December 2004, 08:47 PM
Bigpond were of course no help whatsoever! Granted if they had done something about it then they might have avoided the big crash they had not long after...

I don't want you to think that i'm taking Bigpond's side, but their duty ends when it comes to supplying bandwidth.

I used to work with an 'IT proffessional' who ran a web server privately. He got hacked, and the hackers used his site to store illegally provided software - movies, games, applications etc. So users on the internet were dowloading from his site, and chewing up his cap.

He got an excess bill for about $1500 for a month's usage. At the end of the day, he complained saying that Bigpond should have been able to put a stop to it - their reponse was that if he was running a web server, he should have been secure - and i agree with them.

Being an IT admin himself, leaving himself open to attack is just ridiculous.

PS - We never rated his ability at work either ;)

goughy
5th December 2004, 09:01 PM
I don't want you to think that i'm taking Bigpond's side, but their duty ends when it comes to supplying bandwidth.

I used to work with an 'IT proffessional' who ran a web server privately. He got hacked, and the hackers used his site to store illegally provided software - movies, games, applications etc. So users on the internet were dowloading from his site, and chewing up his cap.

He got an excess bill for about $1500 for a month's usage. At the end of the day, he complained saying that Bigpond should have been able to put a stop to it - their reponse was that if he was running a web server, he should have been secure - and i agree with them.

Being an IT admin himself, leaving himself open to attack is just ridiculous.

PS - We never rated his ability at work either ;)

HUMPH! I am not blaming them for the virus, but how hard would it be to stick a filter on at their end to prevent all their customers getting inundated with the virus and also to help things at their end by not propgating it further.... If I remember correctly it was the same virus that caused a major problem with Bigpond not long after I was getting inundated with the virus. If I hadn't had my own website/domain I would not have been able to do the workaround and would have been stuck with a huge download bill!

I guess I could have used mailwasher but what a waste of time that is when you have the internet running all day and OE open all day..

At the end of the day you are right, they didn't HAVE to do anything, but it wouldn't have been hard to do and would have helped everyone in the long run..customer service can go a long way! ;-)

Edit: Oops! Didn't realised I was signed in as goughy! Twas clikchic here...

Ducky
6th December 2004, 07:42 AM
I am not blaming them for the virus, but how hard would it be to stick a filter on at their end to prevent all their customers getting inundated with the virus and also to help things at their end by not propgating it further...
Most ISPs will provide an e-mail filter on their end now, but a lot of them will still charge you for it. What I don't like about an ISP filtering your e-mail, is that there is nothing stopping the filter from accidently blocking important e-mails (or e-mails you wish to receive) and you have no way of retrieving it (on the contrary, you would have people complaining about not receiving e-mails). Currently, I just use 'Spamkiller' by McAfee (which works in conjunction with the McAfee firewall and anti-virus) to filter any virus e-mails or spam in general. The good thing about it is that it will block the e-mails before downloading them, but will give you a section where you are able to view the blocked e-mails so that you can retrieve them later on if necessary.

Fishman Dan
6th December 2004, 07:54 AM
I think we're getting spam confused with viruses, or in my example hackers.

Spam is a problem for everyone, basically no matter how secure you are. They aren't compromising your system, or using up your monthly cap for that matter.

In the event of having a web server online generating massive traffic, sure an ISP can tell that the bandwidth is being utilised, but it's not up to them to decide whether it's intended or not.

Ducky
6th December 2004, 09:33 AM
'Spamkiller' blocks both spam and viruses (as mentioned, it works in conjunction with the anti-virus), so no, I'm not confused. The definition of e-mail filtering will depend on which ISP you are with. For example, with WestNet 'filtering' refers to both spam and viruses, they're not individually configurable.

In relation to hackers, I didn't even touch on that. In the case of your IT friend the only circumstance in which Bigpond would be responsible is if they were the physically the webhost, not just the provider of his connection.

Regards,

Ben (Ducky).

markTHEblake
6th December 2004, 10:34 PM
I don't want you to think that i'm taking Bigpond's side, but their duty ends when it comes to supplying bandwidth.

Its a good point you make, but recent times have proven that ISP's have to take care of the spam/virus burden to reduce the load on their own systems - ie Bigponds burnout last year.

about 18 months ago, sitting on the helpdesk late i night, i noticed a problem with our mail server - message delivery was being delayed, starting from 9am. every night i reported it, and the next day i was told there was no problem, and i was a PITA (despite the fact that the mail headers proved the problem but thats another story)

Eventually they worked out our mailserver was being hit with 10,000 undeliverable messages per night - mon to fri, and becuase the senders address was false, the messages would loop back to us again, causing congestion. For a system with only 50,000 users that was a huge burden.

IMHO it was the same thing but on a much larger scale that killed Bigpond last year.

An interesting side point, it showed the Spammers only worked business hours. Mon - Fri in the USA.

Fishman Dan
6th December 2004, 11:43 PM
Eventually they worked out our mailserver was being hit with 10,000 undeliverable messages per night - mon to fri, and becuase the senders address was false, the messages would loop back to us again, causing congestion. For a system with only 50,000 users that was a huge burden.

This is usually a flaw of the mail server admin - you quite possibly had your mail server configured to allow mail relaying, effectively turning it into another resource for spammers to utilise - for free.

The fact that you were getting 10k NDR's was possibly because you had reverse lookup on your DNS, to verify the senders address before allowing delivery. Effective anti-spam method, but takes a heavy toll on a mail server resources.

Having a mail server allowing mail relaying is a good way to get your domain black-listed across the internet for any e-mail delivery - an easy list to get one, very hard to get off.

markTHEblake
7th December 2004, 11:13 AM
No - none of that.

the server was getting mail bombed with a dictionary list at our domain.

from memory i think the reply address given was our own domain as well, otherwise it wouldnt have been such an issue - the looping that is.