Unusually high data usage megathread

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@cbell2112 wrote:

New customer.  Had no idea how much data I used until I signed up at the end of August.  September showed that I  averaged about 17 Gigs/day which seemed like it could be possible.  We are not cord cutters so we have a bunch of X1 boxes in my house.  I figured there was no way we would ever go over. 

 

Checked today and I am averaging 35 Gigs/day in October.  Basically double, nothing has changed month over month.  I recognize all the devices on my network.  I was told that yesterday/Saturday I used 120 Gigs of data of the 177 Gigs registered for the month.    What happened Saturday?:

 

I worked until 4 pm then streamed the UNC vs GA Tech football game via Sling since Comcast doesn't have ACC Network then went out dinner and streamed 1 Showtime show and maybe a little Youtube.

 

Wife was home but she doesn't stream

 

Son was out all day and spent the night out

 

Daughter worked a double.  Maybe streamed later but probably not much

 

I was told by Comcast that the game took 51 gigs/hour if it was in HD.  Not totally sure if Sling is true HD.  Picture was good but I find it hard to believe it could possibly use up to 150 Gigs for 1 game streaming.  

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There is no way a video game used 51 gigs an hour.  4k movies don't use that much data.

I meant a football game that I had to stream via Sling. Still from the ads that you see, you can stream 21 hours a day and not hit the cap.  I have been watching my usage for any random spikes.   Yesterday we used 21 gigs which seems more in line since my 2 kids stream a lot since there is no tv in their rooms.   I just don't understand the 120 gigs in 1 day.   

I can see what each device does on my network except I can't see the Xfinity X1 boxes so if I stream youtube or SHO through the Xfinity box, it doesn't show me how much usage is coming from that box.  Or am I missing something. 

My X1 boxes are listed among the other devices here:

https://internet.xfinity.com/devices

You may not get that if you don't use a rented router or don't have xFi in your area.

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@cbell2112 wrote:

I meant a football game that I had to stream via Sling. Still from the ads that you see, you can stream 21 hours a day and not hit the cap.  I have been watching my usage for any random spikes.   Yesterday we used 21 gigs which seems more in line since my 2 kids stream a lot since there is no tv in their rooms.   I just don't understand the 120 gigs in 1 day.   

 

I can see what each device does on my network except I can't see the Xfinity X1 boxes so if I stream youtube or SHO through the Xfinity box, it doesn't show me how much usage is coming from that box.  Or am I missing something. 

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Live TV only streams in HD, which is about 1.7 gigs per hour.  A 4k video stream uses between 5 to 8 gigs of data per hour.  Unless you had 9 tv's watching a 4k movie, there's no way you used 51 gigs in an hour.

Sounds like a good reason not to use X1 boxes and just stream everything.  Run everything through a separate firewall including wifi (don't use wifi on the cable router).

Then you'll know what every device uses, when it used it, and the aggregate.  You can also set bandwidth limits by device if you're worried about it.  Sling doesn't load so much (3-4Mbps) but other apps will pull what they can for streaming in the 6-8Mbps range..  Phones will too -- 25+Mbps if they can.

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@lesmikesell wrote:

My X1 boxes are listed among the other devices here:

https://internet.xfinity.com/devices

You may not get that if you don't use a rented router or don't have xFi in your area.

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Right, but it doesn't show how much data those boxes are using.  I typically stream some youtube and Showtime on my X1 boxes.   When I look at my xFi devices, the X1 boxes are not listed so I can't account for the streaming from the X1 boxes unless they don't count(which I doubt).  My Roku tv is listed as well as all of my other devices.  

Many of my tv's are not smart tv's and wifi firestick is pretty clunky and doesn't always get the best signal.  X1 boxes are much easier to use less my 1 Roku tv as they are not dependent on a wifi connection.  

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@cbell2112 wrote:

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Right, but it doesn't show how much data those boxes are using.  I typically stream some youtube and Showtime on my X1 boxes.   When I look at my xFi devices, the X1 boxes are not listed so I can't account for the streaming from the X1 boxes unless they don't count(which I doubt).  My Roku tv is listed as well as all of my other devices.  

 

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If you click on a device it should show the usage.  Not actual numbers, just a low/high graph and percentage of total, but you should be able to tell what uses the most and when.   The X1 boxes count if you  are streaming with the internet apps, but would not count normal channels or dvr usage.

In case you missed all the other comments here, a lot of people are having errors in their usage, so be sure you have called customer support and complained about it.  Maybe they will figure out what everyone has in common and fix it.

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@flatlander3 wrote:

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@FlickNFreckles wrote:

Same here.

 

What's confusing is that I did get my courtesy month back (for a day).

Then they took it away again.

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Zero here too.  What Xfinity giveth, I suppose comcast taketh away from the other guy who lost a free month.  Thank you O donor of the free bytes 😛

 

There is some bot traffic picking up from what I see.  I got two nailing my firewall now.  103.31.12.91 is Japan utility -- some telco, and another one 13.124.235.225 is an Amazon cloud service, Korea based.  SYN Probes.  About 5 hits/sec each.  Probably hijacked virtual machines. 

 

Does it count as data cap traffic?  Probably. 

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You know, with all the posts about data usage here and in the billing forum, followed by referrals to Comcast Security - I'm starting to wonder if a group or advanced persistent threat org of some sort gained access and/or control over part of the Comcast infrastructure.  Perhaps the data meter discrepancy is a mass data exfiltration of customer traffic.... 

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@cbell2112 wrote:

 

I can see those graphs under the xFi section but the X1 boxes do not appear under that section at all.   I can see the X1 boxes under the Devices section of my account on the customer.xfinity.com website.   All I can do is troubleshoot.

That's because xFi only sees the devices connected to your Xfinity Gateway. The X1 cable boxes use a different internet portal and don't appear under xFi, but any internet use they have will still count against the cap. 

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@cbell2112 wrote:

How much of a delay is there in posting the data usage to the website.  I looked at my usage at 11:43 Pm before going to bed then again at 10:25 AM  this morning.  Literally nothing was done except standard HTML traffic during that time but my meter has changed from 216 gigs to 228 gigs.  

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There's a 24 hour delay, typically. 

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@lesmikesell wrote:

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@cbell2112 wrote:

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Right, but it doesn't show how much data those boxes are using.  I typically stream some youtube and Showtime on my X1 boxes.   When I look at my xFi devices, the X1 boxes are not listed so I can't account for the streaming from the X1 boxes unless they don't count(which I doubt).  My Roku tv is listed as well as all of my other devices.  

 

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If you click on a device it should show the usage.  Not actual numbers, just a low/high graph and percentage of total, but you should be able to tell what uses the most and when.   The X1 boxes count if you  are streaming with the internet apps, but would not count normal channels or dvr usage.

 

 

 

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I can see those graphs under the xFi section but the X1 boxes do not appear under that section at all.   I can see the X1 boxes under the Devices section of my account on the customer.xfinity.com website.   All I can do is troubleshoot.

How much of a delay is there in posting the data usage to the website.  I looked at my usage at 11:43 Pm before going to bed then again at 10:25 AM  this morning.  Literally nothing was done except standard HTML traffic during that time but my meter has changed from 216 gigs to 228 gigs.  

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@Synical wrote:

 

You know, with all the posts about data usage here and in the billing forum, followed by referrals to Comcast Security - I'm starting to wonder if a group or advanced persistent threat org of some sort gained access and/or control over part of the Comcast infrastructure.  Perhaps the data meter discrepancy is a mass data exfiltration of customer traffic.... 

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If that were true, we'd see widespread, across the board spikes in internet traffic, yet that's not that case.

I, for one, never saw the unusual data usage spikes in September or October. (I have xFI Advantage with unlimited data now so that's no longer a concern)

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@darkangelic wrote:

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@cbell2112 wrote:

 

I can see those graphs under the xFi section but the X1 boxes do not appear under that section at all.   I can see the X1 boxes under the Devices section of my account on the customer.xfinity.com website.   All I can do is troubleshoot.

That's because xFi only sees the devices connected to your Xfinity Gateway. The X1 cable boxes use a different internet portal and don't appear under xFi, but any internet use they have will still count against the cap. 

 

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@cbell2112 wrote:

How much of a delay is there in posting the data usage to the website.  I looked at my usage at 11:43 Pm before going to bed then again at 10:25 AM  this morning.  Literally nothing was done except standard HTML traffic during that time but my meter has changed from 216 gigs to 228 gigs.  

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There's a 24 hour delay, typically. 

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To be clear then, it is normal not to see the data usage from X1 boxes when using streaming apps within the X1 system.

And there is a 24 hour delay for usage to post to your account BUT you can look at the graphs for the devices that are connected to your network and it will show you when you used data in last 24 hours.   Honestly, that doesn't make a lot of sense.