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Tether Data Plan 5GB Gone in 4 hours of use! Do you tether? Please help!
 

Do you tether? I have att. I pay $50 for 5GB. I have wifi at house and was using 1/2 GB per month before starting to tether on my iphone.

Now, after 2 hours of use, I got text saying 65% use. 1 hour of use later I got text saying 90% use.

I tether ONLY for ebay and paypal log in. I have only 2 sales here guys, 4 listings between two stealth accounts. It's not MASS quantities of data you'd think.

I am always on ipburger. I then open ebay and sign in, spend a little time there. I am listing currently ON ebay cause I am only listing 1-2 items per week. No ink frog needed yet, but I am quick. Some quick browsing and bidding. Log into paypal if needed and sign off and disconnect tether. All other activity is done from my home wifi.

SOOoo what is going on? How can 4 hours of use be 5GB and if so what do you all do about this?

To be, running 2 stealth accounts within 10 items per month, it looks as it will cost me $50 for the first week and $20 each additional week in data. $110 a month for internet! Is this what other tether people are experiencing?

How mich will it cost when I am selling 500 items per month? $2500?

Something is wrong. 5GB should be enough to watch 6 or7 movies on Netflix. Analyze the logs. There is no way you should be burning through this much bandwidth just listing on eBay.

I didn't think so. What is analyze the logs mean?

It means analyze your logs :-)

1. Open up a cmd prompt (Start, type cmd)
2. Type perfmon.exe /res
3. The Resource Monitor should open.
4. Click on Network tab

This will break down the amount of network utilization for any program running. The PID column means process ID. All programs running on your PC gets assigned a process ID.

You want to look at the bits/sec to see what is consuming bandwidth.

This program is also useful to track CPU, disk and memory usage. But network tab is where you want to go for your issue. Good luck,

It means look at your log to see what is happening as explained above.

Then you should call their customer service to get everthing sorted.

Does not sound correct what is happening.

Are you on contract? Maybe cancel.

:mod:

You might also check your phone to see is anyone else is logged onto that tether program.
I use to get 6-10mb/sec download speeds and would download 5gb in about 2-3 hours of consent use. You are downloading some major stuff over there.

also make sure its password protected so that no one else can access your internet! :)

Are you sure you do not have a program running in the back ground, maybe a torrent downloaded? Its also possible that windows is downloading updates, so I would check to make sure that automatic updates is off.

You are going though way too much data for just eBay, so something is amiss.

You save my day.. cmd save more time than installing another process viewer :D

It is just GREAT when a post helps us with stealth.

Makes such a difference.

Good Luck to you, ust0!

:pop2:

Make sure you setup a wifi password to your tethering wifi. You may have neighbors using your wifi to download torrent/stream.

Very true point - right now, OP speak to customer service and get this sorted out

I called AT&T. They said I am using all that data. It is password protected. I don't physically download anything so I need to see what pc is doing without my knowledge. The above steps are outside my skill level but I will trying. If everything is written above verbatim on how to type it on my pc it should work.

I will report back. Thanks all.

Thanks for the great instructions. I followed the steps. Here is what I found. Can you please help me decifer?

Image PID Send (B/sec) Receive (B/sec) Total (B/sec)
Dropbox.exe 7024 296 1,092,828 1,093,125
iexplore.exe 6704 2,954 86,265 89,219
rundll32.exe 3860 575 12,779 13,354
iexplore.exe 5644 258 6,066 6,324
svchost.exe (NetworkService) 1144 43 593 637
dasHost.exe 1636 132 319 451
IDVault.exe 7492 119 175 295
System 4 58 3 60
svchost.exe (LocalServiceAndNoImpersonation) 2524 0 9 9


Now obviously I need to uninstall drop box as it's sending and receiving at times over 1 million b/sec.

Aside from that I don't know what the other things are.

I looked in programs for iexplore, rundll32, schost, dashost, idvault and didn't find them. How can I figure out what these things are and whether or not I need them, or can remove/close them.

THANKS! :-)

iexplore, is a Internet Explorer file (not needed), rundll32 I believe is a graphics card file. schost is operating system file, I believe.

idvault, its a constant guard protection suite, some kind of anti virus program.
dashost- operating system file, enables pairing between the system and wired or wireless service, its needed.

dropbox.exe is the problem, the others seem inconsequential compared to the amount of bandwidth dropbox is consuming. For example, the 2nd highest bandwidth consumer is iexplorer, which is utilizing 89 kb/s

Notice I bolded kb/s? Well, I did that on purpose to show you that dropbox is consuming 1 MB/S. The 89 kb/s is nothing compared to what dropbox is doing.

I can't tell how long you ran perfmon for, so lets just crunch the numbers....

dropbox.exe = 1.09 mb/s
everything else = 0.10 mb/s

So, yes...dropbox is taking up 99% of your bandwidth. See the problem?

And glad that I helped out (I think you meant me when you said thank you :p). Disable dropbox while you're tethering and fairly certain it will solve your tethering issue.

Thanks so much, this helps a lot! :-)

So ATT&T wasn't lying, hahaha. First time for everything!

I know right? Of course my FIRST and instant conclusion was ATT is CRAZY and wrong! LOL It just seemed like such a natural thought.

If you continue to use mobile tethering and your plan is limited to 5GB, it should be way more than enough for using ebay/paypal.

I strongly suggest keeping an eye on perfmon program while you're tethering. This will help you gauge any rogue processes that consume your bandwidth.

You can find it quickly by typing perfmon.exe /res in command window or just go to START > ALL PROGRAMS > ACCESSORIES > SYSTEM TOOLS > RESOURCE MONITOR.

I just realized something about your original quote...

As mentioned previously, the Resource monitor caught dropbox consuming 1 mb/s...that's one megabyte of data every second.

So in 1 minute, thats 60 mb's. In one hour that's 3.6 GB (60mb x 60 min = 3600 mb OR 3.6 GB) --- that's assuming it is running at that rate the entire hour.

That text that you got of 65% usage of your 5GB plan was accurate! And the follow up text of 90% usage is also correct based on the calculations of what dropbox was doing.

Hopefully by now, you've corrected this. :p