Unusually high data usage megathread

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@Silvano_gaytan wrote:

I've been doing the same stuff since before I cut off my cable side of Comcast and supposedly am using 2-3x as much data as I was before. None of the habits have changed we use the xfinity stream beta app which we were told by a Comcast rep that would not eat up our GB usage. Your system keeps saying I using 20-30 GB average a day when no one is home more than half the time. I would like an explanation. I purchased my own router 2 years ago and never had issues until we cut our cable. And no I would not like to rent a router from you guys. @Comcast

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Apologies for the issues and the experience that you described above.

In the interest of the customer experience, I have applied a credit to your account while our team researches your account further.

The credit will appear on your next printed statement and you can view the credit online via My Account.

The monthly data usage on your account so far is well below 1 TB.  November data is 309 gb and December to date shows about 588 gb so far.   

I've asked a colleague to review your account and contact you directly. Thanks for your patience.

We offer tools to help you track and manage your usage so there are never any surprises about how much data you use:

• Data Usage Meter in My Account - Monitor how much data you have used with our Data Usage Meter.
• Xfinity My Account App - You can also monitor how much data you have used in our mobile app. (Download the Xfinity My Account app.)
• Notifications - We will send you an 'in-browser' notice and an email letting you know when you approach, reach and exceed a terabyte. You can also elect to receive notifications at additional thresholds as well as set up mobile text notifications. Usage notifications will not be sent to customers who enroll in the Unlimited Data Option.
• Data Plan Website - Summary of plan features and additional tools and tips related to the data plans. To visit, go to dataplan.xfinity.com.

For all - the link below has some general information on how to avoid overage charges and tips to conserve data usage:
https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/data-usage-avoid-overage-charges

Providing some additional information, background and tips below from our team that does the data overage reviews.

Customer owned devices
- One example are devices like Ubiquiti uNiFi, which our team most commonly sees as an issue with data usage. The device has an internal metering system along with a periodic speed test built into it. The speed test can accrue massive amounts of data usage without reporting to its own internal metering system because it is part of its system functions, not a device using data even though it is using data. We report its usage because we monitor for all data traffic going to and from the modem/network, not per device connected to their network.

- The number and kinds of devices connected to your network matters. Suggestion is to log into your router to see and verify all the devices connected to your network" (very applicable with customer owned devices).

Metering System:
- Comcast does not have direct access into the metering system to the extent to be able to artificially input or output data usage results or information. Our metering system is regularly audited as well where information on it can be gathered from https://www.netforecast.com/.
It includes everything from the yearly audits to how the metering system works on a technical level. This is done third party outside of Comcast.

Comcast data metering accuracy reports at the link below:
https://www.netforecast.com/comcast-internet-usage-accuracy-reports/

- The metering system is delayed by up to 24 hours. "I watched my meter and it went up by 100GB in the last 3 hours and I just booted up my computer for 15 minutes!" is not accurate - the metering timeframe is not 1:1 - its delayed because it needs to validate data and remove any data that we do not count towards the metering system. This includes things like firmware updates we push out and any other possible data we may push to the network for normal operations.

- Greatest opportunity with Windows 10 devices. Windows 10 has a built in data usage meter for its own data tracking per application/software used on the device for 30 days(Settings -> Network & Internet -> Data Usage tab).

- Similarly could be done for other devices, ex: “Go into Netflix settings and make sure that it pauses after not watching it for a while”, etc.

Overall:
There is no trend or consistency indicating an issue in metering, but rather these have all been unique issues per network requiring the subscriber to troubleshoot/review their network.

The common trend topic is “there is no way I can use this much data”. While the number amount of data a customer can see on the meter is more than what they know to be using, doesn’t mean it isn’t being used.

Common data users:
- Streaming devices left on even when TVs are turned off – continuously streaming and/or misconfigured settings on streaming devices
- Data backups (including cloud backups)
- Large file downloads for entertainment (video games, updates, locally downloaded movies/videos from online services, etc.) or business purposes (files of information/data for business needs, Data backups downloaded from or uploaded to, etc.)

My data usage is at least 30G/day, when we are were on international trip and no one is there at home. 

@reddyvabad

One of the many reasons why I like a firewall seperate from a cable modem.

As root: # /sbin/shutdown -p now

Cable modem?  If you can get to it remotely and check the settings on your modem, the game is over and would explain 30GB.  Can you?

I have used the estimator tool for measuring data. I put in 1.5 of my actual hrs in each of the categories that I would use...  my total estimated use totals less than 600....  the billing for this data exceeded the allowed 1000..

(2) years ago I signed on to a sweetheart package that included phone,tv internet all for less than $150. Per month. During that period there was no talk about data caps.

after the contract was completed the package went up to 216.00 and I got a notice that my data exceeded the limit set by Xfinity. Being a senior on a fixed income I tried to adjust by canceling the tv and phone. Now I have the mystery data that will force me to look elsewhere for internet or pay  for the pirate that appears in my data usage. Any recommendations??

The situation seems to have cleared-up after I exchanged my 4-year-old gateway for a new one.  My data usage immediately went back to normal levels. However, because I burned through so much data the first few days of the month, I will probably go through my 1-T byte limit before the end of the month.  Thank you for the credit to my account, I really appreciate your understanding.

When I upgraded my service to the fastest possible internet offered I was told my usage caps would be reset to zero but that hasn't happened and I've been getting endless overage messages. How do I fix this?

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@sf_o_matic wrote: When I upgraded my service to the fastest possible internet offered I was told my usage caps would be reset to zero ...

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That's incorrect. If you are in an area subject to the data cap (see https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/data-usage-plan ) it doesn't matter if you subscribe to 10 megabits or 1 gigabit or how you change speeds during a calender month -- your usage just keeps accumulating until the last day of the month. If you exceed the cap and you've used up your two courtesy months, you're subject to overage charges unless you are paying for Unlimited service.

The data cap does not apply their Gigabit Pro 2 Gb fiber optic service.

@dshank33418 

Comcasteds is helping people with this and has some billing magic that appears to be a neat trick, but lets also help comcasteds, yourself and the rest of the network. There's not a lot the man can do to diagnose home network setups for folks.

I'm hitting attempted traffic from exploited boxes on the comcast customer network pool itself, as well as just about every commercial cloud hosting service, and deliberate hacking attempts from all over the world. Helping you, might help me too.  Working fine, then all of the sudden big data is an indicator of a problem.  So, from my notes and solution on this:

For a sanity check, take a peek at your cable modem settings. At the very least with little effort on your part, check these settings. Now after you change the default admin password like you were supposed to..... 😉

* Disable ICMP (no pings to your external IP address)

* Disable UPnP (It was a bad idea when it came out.....it's still a bad idea)

* Disable remote modem access, last thing you want is an external facing web server on a cable modem.  Don't try to run services like SSH or VPN with a modem.  That's insane and asking for it.

Should be a firewall on it. Although I trust the built in modem firewall about as far as I can throw my truck, make sure it's on. If you are "port forwarding" to any internal machines, disable that unless you have that protected by "other means".

On Usage:

2.5Mbps (Mega Bit Per Second) = 1.13GB/hour (Gigabytes per hour)

4Mbps = 1.8GB/hour – good for 720p, acceptable for 1080p

6Mbps = 2.7GB/hour – much better for 1080p 50-60 frames/sec. Your 4K TV stream will be here or higher

15Mbps = 6.75GB/hour – Phones can do this. Downloads can too if the server on the other side has a good pipe to Xfinity. It's all about what you're talking to, and the slowest “hop” between you and that.

I stream. A lot, perhaps an excessive amount with Roku boxes. I've also got a couple remote locations I'm talking to 24/7. I'm hard pressed to run over 300GB with my current setup with a decent firewall, throttling, with dynamic firewall rulesets. Still working on that firewall  formula, but bad does exist on the internet.  Shields up.  You need them.

Got a Netgear Router? R6250, R6400, R6700, R6900, R7000, R7100LG, R7300, R7900, R8000, D6220, and D6400 contain an unauthenticated command injection vulnerability that may be executed directly or via cross-domain requests. Your router could be pwned (and world accessible), and currently being used for a botnet. No, it doesn't require anything other than just being connected and people are looking for them.

https://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/582384/

Plenty of other router exploits out there too. Lots of models. Lots of issues. I used the above for an illustration of why you want to check for firmware updates. Find all the exploits on https://www.us-cert.gov/ or search kb.cert.org. Feds also pump out a weekly exploit list, for everything. The gov site is weak for search capability, but useful anyway. Weekly alerts are something they do well.

My family's data usage is usually about half the 1024 MB limit -- then suddenly this month (Dec 2019), it's (apparently) doubled for no reason we can discern. I had my alerts set up, so I got notifications at 90%, 100%, then that I've exceeded my "one free overage month" and the data usage doesn't seem to be slowing down. We're only at the 24th of the month!

12.12 - 921 GB

12.18 - 1024 GB
12.22 - 1130 GB

Look... we're not using that much data. Something's wrong. Maybe something's been hacked and someone is draining our data.

We've identified all the devices connected to our router (and the ones connected directly to the Xfinity modem). Our router didn't have tracking turned on before (it does now), but we've looked at the usage of the devices we can track, and the total we can account for from all devices is about 400GB/mo... right in line with what we normally use and nowhere near this 1130 GB and climbing fast. 

Just this morning, when everyone was dead asleep, the router says someone used 2GB of data--literally nothing was on. 

Xfinity-- 1) what's wrong with your tracking and 2) how do we stop the madness and 3) this is my formal request that you stop charging us for data we're not using and help us figure out what's happening.

Keep in mind that Xfinity's counter says it may not count data used in the last 24 hours.  So data that seems to appear while people are asleep or things are off may have actually happened sometime over the prior 24 hours.

Is this your own router?  Is it a unify/ubiquity by any chance?  (They happen to have an issue of their own that can cause mysterious data usage.)

Comcast, just issued me a warning for going over 1 terabye, and your meter is absolutely broken, i checked all theindividual data usages on ALL of my devices and did the math and put myself at 477 gigs of data, so why are you giving me a warning for 1tb of data used? i've seen all kinds of threads showing that your meter is faulty, so why are you punishing us for things that are YOUR fault comcast?

You can now add me to the list as well. I'm in the Minneapolis, MN area and got an email last week stating I have used 90% of my data. Not sure how this can be when I haven't changed anything and months prior haven't been over 500GB and averaging around 425GB. Now for some reason in Dec I'm pushing 1000GB? Talked with a Comcast rep and ZERO answers. Told them I had read about their metering being goofy. Rep didn't have a response for that. Did not get anywhere with the rep other than him telling me I had a spike on Dec 1 and Dec 17. I'm doing some research on those days but they don't appear to be any different than any other day from the past. Let's just say I'm not happy.

I'm still having the same problem, although I will admit their numbers are getting closer to reality.  Last month I didn't hit the cap because we were out of town for 2 weeks, but this month we're back to the same old problem.  There are numerous devices on my wi-fi (mesh) network, but they all funnel through a single Plume Networks superpod.  The Plume network keeps data usage statistics on all devices on the network and it reports that I've only used 797 Gb in the past 30 days, (since Nov 27th,) yet Comcast just sent me my 100% notification so their counter has added over 200 Gb to my numbers.  At this point I'm pretty sure they have no ability to count my data usage individually.  I think they count the numbers for my local switch and divide by the number of users.  My next step is to unplug and see if the counter keeps counting, but I've got to set up an alternate (Verizon hotspot) data feed first.  I shouldn't have to go through all this...and neither should the rest of you. 😞