Unusually high data usage megathread

I agree that any throttling of speed is ridiculous. If I pay for 350Mbs then I expect the results to be on close all the time, no matter how much data I "used" (which is also a made-up concept, like data is going to run out...). Most people who just use their internet "lightly" won't notice any drop in speed. As opposed to someone like me who works on computers/online, so I am consuming more bandwidth and I notice. When I am coding a website or program and running the packages on Github, downloading what I need (software), sometimes a single file is over 10Gb, and other things, you get used to the response time of your internet. @OpenSource

I know your comment was a little over a year ago, but that just goes to show the "progress" Comcast has(not) made. Like you I also thought the X1 system was good. I am pretty tech savvy so I have always been able to fix most issues that come up. About 3 months ago my internet starting dropping out every 20 for about 5 minutes then coming on for a few hours, or minutes, it varied until the process repeated. So, being me I tried to find the issue with no luck. After a long time on the phone, being tossed from department to department and each time having to explain my situation all over again, one rep told me that they flagged Bittorrent, the program, as Copyright Infringement and locked my service. I still don't think that was really the issue because if it was why did it not show up for the 15 previous reps who looked at the same info. Bittorrent in itself is totally legal, it is what is transferred through it that they say is Copyright Infringement, well I hadn't downloaded anything, other than the program. So assume that really was the issue, why? Why did their system allow that to happen? And why was finding the cause so difficult? Comcast's Phone service is TERRIBLE, the only saving grace of their customer service WAS their ability to send a tech out within a couple hours, but Covid has thrown a wrench in everything (not just Comcast) and it is exposing these "weakpoints" of many companies. The simple fact that the entire basically the entire nation's students are taking classes online, Comcast has their monoploy on the market and we have to sit here and deal with caps and all these other issues should be emabarrassing for the company. If you are going to have a monopoly wouldn't you want it to run as smooth as possible so there is no thought of disrupting said monopoly? Or at least be able to handle what you take on.

My date usage is ususally around 400-500 GB or even less.  Starting from June my data usage jumped to average of 1000 gb per month despite having the same normal internet activity.

I am also having high latency or unstable ping when discording or video gaming. Can someone look into this for me or help me? 

Thank you

@Libbylord, @namelessc, @deathkitty: Scroll back up this thread for ideas of how to investigate this.  There are multiple ways from simple to technical.  You can try asking Comcast too, but my impression is that actually figuring it out yourself is likely to be faster and more successful. The people at Comcast probably talk to 20 people a day and they obviously don’t know your network, devices, and software like you do. Over the years, some of the offending applications that people have found are things I had never heard of. One of the most recent cases was a phone just quietly doing stuff in the background.  It doesn't take any user interaction to use lots of data.

@Mike6623 

If you work in IT, then monitoring your own data usage from every device you own, and routing every packet including all of your WiFi traffic through a firewall box that could be as simple as a raspberry pi router, shouldn't be much of a challenge, and you ought to be a bit more concerned about why that happens on your network, especially if you think you have your own house in order.  Perhaps you don't.

I've got over a year’s worth of log files of unsolicited hostile traffic that includes virus propagation traffic from my neighbors clap infested machines and devices that were pwnd, as well as daily threat actors walking the subnet that say 140G in 7 days on an unsecured network, with a consumer grade cable gateway with horrid default settings and open ports vulnerable to syn-ack attacks is getting off pretty easy.  Being "home" has nothing to do with that.

Another 'benefit' of a fat pipe and upgraded speed is that pulling 20G/day isn't very difficult. That's 1.85Mbps in 24 hours, or 3.7 in 12 hours. Unless you are throttling and traffic shaping, any WiFi streaming device can easily pull 8-12Mbps or better. A Lan connected device can pull extraordinarily more data than that.

If you work in IT, you also should be glad an ISP or a 3rd party isn't data logging stats, connections, DNS lookups ect, on every customer EXCEPT for an aggregate data usage number. That's a microsoft/google/twadder/dorkbook dream come true. Hay, stay "signed in" so we can record everything you look at and sell the data -- have a tracking cookie, and make sure you agree to send "usage statistics" after you sign the EULA agreement that lets us log all your data.......

As far as Xfinity trying to troubleshoot your data usage, or anyone else without any details about your network, or anything to go on -- other than "they say I use data"?  Welp.  If you are in IT, you know all about that already.  Not much to work with.

Same here.  I received an email stating that my current usage is high and that I have used up 75% of my 1.2TB data.  This information is wrong.  My router device provides me with accurate data, and thus far I have only used 683GB, however, Comcast claims that I have used 997GB.  When I reached out to Comcast about this, the support person told me that they will get me a phone number to contact the data usage team and put me on hold, and then hung up the call.

It's simple comcast, when you send out an email on data-usage, provide a link or email where we can reach out to you with actual data and discuss the discrepancies in the numbers.  We cannot simply accept what you say and start paying you extra. And also please stop hanging up the phone when on hold. 

TK

Just got off the phone with Comcast. Their solution was change my password and check for virues. They claim I have used over 100GB on certain days. I asked how they think that is possible and of course they deflected. My data usage has doubled in recent months. I don't have 50 kids doing online schooling  from my home.....I have 2!

Like so many others I have noticed a huge spike in my monthly data usage with no way of getting details to understand what devices in my home are using so much data.  Our internet and streaming habits have not changed.  To the best of my ability I have estimated what our data usage is using xfinity's very own estimates and also additional research.  I'm not coming up even close to what our actual usage is lately so, naturally, I want to figure it out.  Unfortunately, xfinity makes this impossible to do because they claim they are unable to provide specific data on usage by device.  Interesting that they can show a rolling 24 hour usage by device on the xfi app which is useless since it lacks actual data usage and just shows a generic bar graph with no numbers.  Clearly they're able to track by device otherwise they couldn't even generate the rolling 24 month graphs.  

I'm contacting an attorney to consider taking legal action against xfinity over this.  They need to either provide a way that we can get more detail on our data usage or remove the data cap.   There have been verified news reports in the recent past of errors at xfinity resulting in data use being calculated incorrectly due to software glitches.  How do I know this isn't affecting me?  Answer, until xfinity provides a softare upgrade either online or even at our modem level that can track data use by connected device, we have to trust them.  Sorry xfinity, I don't trust you.  

Xfinity has the technology, they have the data, they need to be more transparent in their billing for data usage so that end users can understand their own data usage by device, by billing period.  

There is no excuse they could possibly have not providing this other than the obvious one which is they want you to buy a much more expensive unlimited data plan.  Period.

@Gus68 

"Xfinity has the technology, they have the data, they need to be more transparent in their billing for data usage so that end users can understand their own data usage by device, by billing period. "

Actually, they don't have the technology to give you "per device" statistics from their end.  It doesn't work that way.  Your internal devices are on an internal network behind a NAT interface (Network Translation). 

What it does is takes a request from an internal client, and pushes it through your external IP address to the intended destination.  When the reply comes back, it comes back to your external IP address, and then NAT (on your gateway) will forward the information back to the client on the internal network that requested it. 

From the outside point of view,  all that is seen is your external IP address.  There is no knowledge of the internal network topology in the reply, only the information to send a reply back your external IP address.  (I'm talking about Xfinity, not what the destination end webserver/service can do, or the information a web browser leaks to the website owner you just contacted).

From what I've seen, their routers don't provide the network address translation table so you can see from an admin page which device is getting data.  You also wouldn't want a "feature" that periodically uploads this table somewhere else for billing purposes (privacy/security issues).  You can however buy a gateway that does give you per device stats on an admin page, or monitor it by other means by passing all of your traffic though a firewall, then on to the gateway -- which is a good idea anyway.

Can their hardware be better?  Sure, but you can save $14/month by using something else.

Im out after holidays.

Data usage button doesnt work on their site. Windows reports 643gb of traffic on ethernet. That is at LEAST 50% local file streaming. I live alone. 1 Netflix movie and a couple Flight SIm updates.

I am out. Peace. Just an FYI I would bet everything I own that they are trying this tactic.

Just to add. I fixed the usage not working on the site, I had a secondary account logged in I wasnt aware. Easy fix. Anyways, look at this graph:

//i.imgur.com/meOY17x.png (fix address in browser, comcast mods this)

Comcast expands the range while keeping the visual data as consistent as possible.

I live alone. Have no video game consoles. 1 PC. 1 Firestick. 1 Phone. I watch maybe 1-2 movies on Netflix a month, and am on SD account. It has been this way for YEARS COMCAST. I can absoltely confidently say my usage habits have NOT CHANGED YOU FOOLS! Last month ONLY, and even then I didnt go over.

This month? Same day? SAME USAGE? WHAATTT? I have used FAR less internet traffic than last month. Windows is reporting 643gb of usage... ALL I USE IS MY PC AND LOCAL VIDEOS I HAVE HAD FOR YEARS! Even 643gb is barely half... Again. NO Netflix usage. ONE GAME UPDATE FOR FLIGHT SIM. There is ZERO CHANCE THAT MY USAGE HAS INCREASED LIKE YOU SAY. I am willing to submit testimony under oath.