Traffic analysis on BT Hub5

Orionaut · 29 Aug 2017 at 20:07

A friend of mine (On limited income) only has basic BT broadband (Restricted bandwidth) . She is horrified to discover that she used 15Gigs last month and has no idea where it has all gone.

(No video/audio streaming, very limited browsing, set for metered bandwidth on Windows updates and set not to connect automatically, etc)

She is concerned that her hub is being hacked. She cant really think of anything else that has consumed so much bandwidth otherwise.

I have Glasswire which can monitor an individual PC's traffic. But that isn't going to help here.

Is there any way of carrying out a Glaswire style analysis of the total hub traffic on the Hub 5?

(As far as I can find-probably not :/)

Alternatively, is there an inexpensive alternative Modem/Router to the Hub 5 that has this ability?

Sparx · 29 Aug 2017 at 20:18

Can't help really re: the traffic monitoring, however for the sake of a usage cap, is it not worth negotiating a deal with BT for the Unlimited package - there must be nothing in the price surely?

Alternatively look for a cheaper provider who offer an Unlimited service i.e. Plusnet / Talktalk. No point wasting money on a router if already on limited income, just to watch data usage...

Switching to an unlimited package / cheaper ISP for unlimited, would obviously be a cheaper and stress-free choice.

Caged · 29 Aug 2017 at 20:57

Upgrading to an unlimited plan will cost less than the value of your time spent trying to figure this out. With the amount of stuff that downloads updates these days it's dangerous to have a capped service.

Steveocee · 30 Aug 2017 at 16:47

As someone who actively supports customers on data capped products. The first responses are always "it wasn't me", "I haven't used that" or "My router must be being hacked".

In the 4 years I've been doing it, never has the router been hacked. There have been 2 separate occasions where the end users gave the password out and then had decided to rescind permission yet the 3rd party used it anyway.

Just be straight up and tell her chances are "a" device has decided to grab some data or has been left running and used it. It's not a monumental amount and really isn't worth losing your time or effort tracking down.

TheVoice · 30 Aug 2017 at 17:15

BT Basic + broadband is £10pm (12GB usage limit), so I doubt switching to another provider or package is an option here.

You can check on the BT hub what devices are connected, but the only way anyone will have been able to do that is if she's given out the WPA2 key or pressed the WPS button to allow them to connect. Worth checking, but realistically it's not likely.

Orionaut · 31 Aug 2017 at 20:21

Thanks for replies.

I suspect that it is just that software uses stupid amounts of bandwidth these days.

I use Glasswire and when I checked yesterday I found that "Thunderbird" had consumed over 50 megs over a 24 hour period. How??? :/

I can easily see how this can add up over a month.

Anyway, my friend is a haggler, after spending the morning on the phone she now has "Basic" broadband, but with "unlimited" bandwidth at no greater cost.

So that, as far as she is concerned, is a Win.

Rroff · 31 Aug 2017 at 20:27

Assuming Windows 10 - unless you really go to town on it Windows 10 will still ignore some restrictions on updates and metered connection setting and also often sends back quite a bit of telemetry and other data from time to time which can mount up. Some people at MS it seems are just utter muppets and don't give a **** about people who have to manage limited bandwidth allowances and other realworld constraints. I'd make sure that it isn't set to share updates P2P as well in the advanced options.

Increasingly quite a few sites have dynamic ad content which can include streaming video, etc. as well which can eat away at an allowance.

Quite a bit of software will also automatically update unless set otherwise.

EDIT: Doesn't take much to mount up these days sadly

I've only had this PC on for about 4-5 hours watch a little bit of Youtube, had Spotify streaming and some light web browsing and already used 1.9GB of data I'd be screwed on a restricted package lol.