Can an ISP red flag you for downloading from newsgroups?
- Thread starter Gadge
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They might do. But I doubt it's anything to do with newsgroups specifically.
Man of Honour
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Nothing to stop them flagging users though, that doesn't actually mean anything as a term without more detail. Every ISP I've worked for has recorded usage data in various levels of detail and unusually heavy users are identified as a matter of routine - that's entirely separate from whether they have traffic management and whether they use the usage data to seed the traffic management though.
I have a list of our current top25 users on one of my screens right this second, if people remain there too long they generally attract my wrath (though usually because it turns out they're compromised in some way and sending vast amounts of spam).
I have a list of our current top25 users on one of my screens right this second, if people remain there too long they generally attract my wrath (though usually because it turns out they're compromised in some way and sending vast amounts of spam).
whats the typical user usage in that top 25 list you have there?
If you use newsgroups, just use SSL, most support it these days and you tend to get faster speeds anyways.
I'm with Virgin Media, the 20M/bit package and download loads. The traffic management is a pain, but doesn't really cause any major problems.
I'm with Virgin Media, the 20M/bit package and download loads. The traffic management is a pain, but doesn't really cause any major problems.
Man of Honour
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It varies a lot, today most of the IPs listed are in the region of 15GB a day. Most of them look fair legitimate in terms of traffic profile though (traffic peaks during business hours, is consistent with previous usage, isn't mainly to/from one destination, isn't single protocol etc - I have a variety of bits of perl which analyse the traffic and produce a report of 'interesting' users).
It really does vary though, I'm interested in any user doing more than 15GB in a day as that equates to downloading at full speed for nearly 6 hours even if you have 8Mbit sync. The business fact is that if you do that much traffic every day for a month, you're into costing us money and being subsidized by other users. I'm also interested in constant lower levels of traffic or consistently high levels of encrypted traffic (particularly SSL).
Every ISP I've ever worked for (and I imagine by extension pretty much every ISP) does fairly extensive profiling even if they don't do traffic management. We'll look for changes in traffic patterns as much as simple high usage (users with compromised machines are actually a bigger pain than intentional abuse by our users in many cases).
I'll add, the issue with SSL is that genuine SSL traffic (that is encrypted http) is generally very small amounts of data, whereas newsgroups using SSL are large amounts. Maybe your ISP can't tell exactly what you're transferring but what you're doing is clear as day.
What's the interest with monthly low usage?
My bro got a letter from Virgin - turns out one of his housemates had been trying to download the entire internet - apparently over 1TB a month or so.
The landlord had a quiet word and the 'shared' connection is much better for 'all' that use it
The landlord had a quiet word and the 'shared' connection is much better for 'all' that use it