What can explain this kind spike of data usage?

[delicatepc]

Hi,

Just a curiosity question... wondering if anyone see similar.

A Droid on Verizon since December 2009 and I am wondering what could explain this insane spike of data for a period of three months (see details below).

Tethering was tried for a little bit here there but mostly just tested for 5 minutes couple occasions (in total maybe 1hour max every used). Didnt do anything crazy like try to run torrents or use as my main connection (general email, youtube, webbrowsing, etc.). I did used to have like 10-15 apps but now just 1-4 basic ones (pandora etc). Been running bugless beast for long time.

Rogue apps? Pandora ridiculously high? I used to listen to pandora a lot in the summer while washing my car.

April 2010 200mb
May 2010 5.3GB!!!!
June 2010 11.540 GB!!!!
July 2010 3.6GB
August 2010 318mb
Sept 2010 325mb
Oct. 2010 342mb
Nov. 2010 262mb
December 2010 193mb
Jan 275mb
Feb 250mb

Thanks,
dpc

 

[B.E.McAllister]

Heard something about windows phone doing they same thing. They didn't come right out and say it but it kinda sounded like they were pointing the finger at the facebook app.



Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk

 

[Laur3nNewm4n]

I don't think anyone aside from you is going to be able to figure this one out. For the future, you can try an app like TrafficCounter, which keeps track of cell data, wifi, call, and text message usage. The cell data counter keeps track of data going in and out. It also keeps track of what apps are using what amounts of data, so this could help you determine if Pandora sucks up a lot. Again, not that this is useful to your past usage, but going forward, it could be handy.

My bet is that you used more data than you'd think doing the tethering. If you had a lot of stuff pulling updates in the background (having Facebook, email, etc. set to refresh ever .635295 seconds, for instance) that would affect it too.

 

[delicatepc]

Yahoo: nonstandard IMAP implementation to blame for Windows Phone 7 data leak -- Engadget

Saw that... My case using Google Apps with domain.

 

[delicatepc]

My bet is that you used more data than you'd think doing the tethering. If you had a lot of stuff pulling updates in the background (having Facebook, email, etc. set to refresh ever .635295 seconds, for instance) that would affect it too.

3mbps connection for one hour straight = roughly 1.35GB

Its possible but I never really used it often (couple times for the most part short periods).

Just pretty crazy jump in comparison to the other months (using this data to make decision on upgrade to new phone with 2gb data option).

dpc

 

[jbdow]

the "pandora in the summer months" does correspond to the spike, yes?
otherwise, i'd be really guessing....

r, john

 

[kodiak799]

Pandora uses @ 60megs per hour, but I think that's hi-def. An hour a day for a month could be almost 2gigs by itself.

 

[born2golf]

any chance you left your tethering running and someone else was using your 3G connection? possibly a neighbor or co-worker? I launched a tethering app while at a trade show one time, and 3 people had jumped on it within 5 minutes. Or perhaps even a laptop in the same home that thinks your tethered connection had a better wifi signal than your router?

 

[TheOldFart]

any chance you left your tethering running and someone else was using your 3G connection? possibly a neighbor or co-worker? I launched a tethering app while at a trade show one time, and 3 people had jumped on it within 5 minutes. Or perhaps even a laptop in the same home that thinks your tethered connection had a better wifi signal than your router?

Can you put security on your tethering app like you can on your home router to prevent others from camping on your service? Never tried to tether, so I'm just curious.

 

[TheOldFart]

Pandora uses @ 60megs per hour, but I think that's hi-def. An hour a day for a month could be almost 2gigs by itself.

Thanks for the info. I just got Pandora One last week and run it on hi-def on both the computer and my Droid. Still makes it difficult to understand the 11GB+ month. That's over 6 hours a day if Pandora were the only data usage.

P.S. I just calculated it and get 84.4 MB/hr on hi-def.
192kbps * 60sec/min * 60min/hr / (1024kb/mb * 8mb/MB) = 84.4MB/hr
I think std-def is 128kbps, so that would be 56 MB/hr.

 

[nmos]

Any chance you left the teathering app on when you weren't actually using it? Maybe your computer was transfering data when you didn't realize it (maybe due to updates or a virus etc)?

 

[born2golf]

any chance you left your tethering running and someone else was using your 3G connection? possibly a neighbor or co-worker? I launched a tethering app while at a trade show one time, and 3 people had jumped on it within 5 minutes. Or perhaps even a laptop in the same home that thinks your tethered connection had a better wifi signal than your router?

Can you put security on your tethering app like you can on your home router to prevent others from camping on your service? Never tried to tether, so I'm just curious.

Yes. With the most tethering apps you have the ability to add a WEP key or you can identify white list MAC addresses. However, with all the various tethering apps I have tried, I can never get either of these to work.