Comcast Data Usage

I know we have several Comcast employees on the forum, can someone provide any details on upcoming plans for usage restrictions and additional fees? I've read the FAQs but there is nothing specific for Denver.

Our usage seems extremely high to me and I'm not sure where it's coming from, we have Netflix (set to medium, just moved to low quality) and no other streaming services. We don't stream movies or watch much on youtube so it seems that work should be the main culprit, or maybe Comcast on-demand (we watch about 1 movie a week)? Before adding Netflix we were still averaging 200 - 300GB per month and now that my daughter found a show she likes we're sitting at 700GB this month (hence the move to low quality).

Comcast says the average usage is about 25GB per month which seems very low to me.

I'd also be curious to hear if ours is out of whack or if others are using a lot of data, you can see your usage here https://customer.comcast.com/Secure/...terDetail.aspx

I'll swap the minute they charge me any fees for data usage.

I thought that Obama's new "Net Neutrality"/FCC takeover of the internet was specifically supposed to stop this?

Hearing nothing for our area, or even any of the West division (except Tuscon).

That being said, you are using a LOT of data. I don't think Netflix alone is the culprit.


My record was ~700gb in one month and I was downloading much more than netflix. That was 2-4 1080p movies per day for a month.

Holly gigs! Thats a lot of data! If I were you, I would change my wifi password settings right now.... The kid next door is probably torrenting on your dime.

UPDATED WITH MY COMCAST AVERAGE.

Attachment 57518

This is for a house of 4 connected users. 2 on vpn 24/7, movie downloads / streaming, tons of multiplayer gaming time, skype and other.

Get a 1.5mb connection like me; it will cut your data usage to almost nothing.

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Originally Posted by ruthabagah

Holly gigs! Thats a lot of data! If I were you, I would change my wifi password settings right now.... The kid next door is probably torrenting on your dime.

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+1 either that or you have a breach resulting in unwanted activity, you joined a botnet, etc.

This is for cell related usage, not in home cable? Never seen a Data Usage Report before, mmmm.

14GB for me so far this month.. I don't stream movies at all and occasionally play music via online services. Any security cameras or anything else? Either someone is tied into your account or your daughter is playing music 24hours a day.. Any family members doing a lot of FaceTime via their phones or other phone based apps over the house network? Obviously if you have an unlimited data plan on the phone you want to keep it off your home internet account. Also look into viruses on your computers, one of them could be running as a server without you knowing.

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Originally Posted by MED

+1 either that or you have a breach resulting in unwanted activity, you joined a botnet, etc.

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Data breech is very unlikely, passwords are secure and rotated, same with a bot infection. That being said our usage does seem high, I've never really thought much about it since my co workers typically run 500-1TB per month but they're probably running other stuff as well. I don't think we've been below 200gb a month in years.

We we don't do any movie or file downloads, no peer to peer, etc.

Maybe online backups of PST files, I have about 50gb of frequently updated PSTs. I guess it's time to do some traces.

Anyonk know if Minecraft is data intensive?

I have an HD security camera that is constantly uploading to the cloud, 3 kids that all watch netflix a lot, and my wife and I are online probably more than average.

Looking at my account it's pretty weird, it shows less than 1gb for January, 186gb for Feb, 282gb for march, and 184gb so far this month. No idea why nothing show up for Jan, everything worked on our end.

Here's mine... 3.5 cell phones, 2 tablets, 1 laptop, 1 desktop, cameras/alarm, television, and netflix

http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l1...psvtbh4lsj.jpg

I'm at about 300 Gb per month average. No streaming except music, just web surfing and such. VOIP phone (magicjack) maybe 60 minutes a month.

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Originally Posted by th3w01f

Data breech is very unlikely, passwords are secure and rotated, same with a bot infection. That being said our usage does seem high, I've never really thought much about it since my co workers typically run 500-1TB per month but they're probably running other stuff as well. I don't think we've been below 200gb a month in years.

We we don't do any movie or file downloads, no peer to peer, etc.

Maybe online backups of PST files, I have about 50gb of frequently updated PSTs. I guess it's time to do some traces.

Anyonk know if Minecraft is data intensive?

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Are you running full backups of those pst's or incremental?

I think Netflix is the main culprit for the recent increase. .7GB per hour is over 500GB a month and I think she has just been leaving it on as background noise. We typically have 20+ active devices connected so we're not typical users but the increase is concerning.

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Originally Posted by 00tec

Are you running full backups of those pst's or incremental?

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Should be incremental but I'll have to dig into it. Running Backblaze and Mozy.

I was averaging 11 gig a DAY. Then I got my own cable modem ...cable modem only not with all the extra crap like wifi and telephone jacks etc... and I am averaging 1.83 immediately upon switching.

Forgot to add were also using comcast VoIP for about 5 hours a day..... It's all starting to add up. :-)

I know the data cap discussion/rumor has been going on for some time. Is there some recent news or something that indicates Comcast is going to be imposing limits in Colorado markets? Last time I did any checking, it was just all rumor...

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Originally Posted by th3w01f

Forgot to add were also using comcast VoIP for about 5 hours a day..... It's all starting to add up. :-)

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Comcast voice doesn't impact your data use.

Voice would only show on usage if you were using Vonage, Magic Jack, or some other voip means.

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Originally Posted by 00tec

Comcast voice doesn't impact your data use.

Voice would only show on usage if you were using Vonage, Magic Jack, or some other voip means.

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Good to know, thanks! Time to jump on a 2 hour conference call.

I'm at 293 GB so far this month. Which is a high month for me. I have a roommate and we're both almost constantly using bandwidth. I can explain the increase (not here though lol). If someone is hitting 700 GB a month, I highly suggest you get some sort of internal monitoring setup to see how that bandwidth adds up. Watch times of the day where people are asleep/not home and see how much data you're pushing out during those times. At the least, run a packet capture on machines while doing minimal network functions and see how much traffic your NIC(s) are pushing out.

I really think some Netflix discipline is in order around here. I was talking to my wife about it and she said the kids had 3 different episodes of the same show streaming on 3 different TVs yesterday afternoon. Even at medium that 2.1GB per hour.

I've been monitoring usage on the firewall as well and everything was looking pretty normal till I decided to follow a link over to theblaze.com. Read a couple articles and looked at my usage, about 200MB in 10 min all served up from a CDN company.

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Originally Posted by th3w01f

I really think some Netflix discipline is in order around here. I was talking to my wife about it and she said the kids had 3 different episodes of the same show streaming on 3 different TVs yesterday afternoon. Even at medium that 2.1GB per hour.

I've been monitoring usage on the firewall as well and everything was looking pretty normal till I decided to follow a link over to theblaze.com. Read a couple articles and looked at my usage, about 200MB in 10 min all served up from a CDN company.

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you may also have to factor your porn addiction... I mean GUN porn addiction!

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Originally Posted by th3w01f

everything was looking pretty normal till I decided to follow a link over to theblaze.com. Read a couple articles and looked at my usage, about 200MB in 10 min all served up from a CDN company.

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I swear every time I click on a link someone posts that goes to that site it wants to bring up multiple pop-ups, instantly play a video clip and display multiple ads with video and sound embedded in them..

YouTube is a Bandwidth hog.

Not sure how accurate this article is, but it throws out some alarming numbers.

This is from: http://www.whistleout.com.au/Broadba...nd-Usage-Guide

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A common misconception about video streaming is
that it doesn’t use up as much data as downloading the same video would. In
fact, it uses about thesame amount of data.

You often end up using more. When streaming a video, the file buffers ahead
of time. This is the segment of the film that you have downloaded.

Unfortunately, if you refresh the page, or close it down and come back later
to re-watch it, chances are you'll have to download it all over again.

We logged how much data YouTube uses for a 5 minute video, using the more
common resolutions.

Here is a table of the speed at which each video downloaded, as well as the
amount uploaded per second and the final amount of data that had been
downloaded.

YouTube
Usage 240p 360p 480p 720p 1080p
Bits per second (down) 400-500Kb 900Kb-1Mb 1.5-1.7Mb 20Mb 20Mb
Bits per second (up) 5-9Kb 15-20Kb 20-26Kb 320Kb 320Kb
Data used in 5 minutes 8.3MB 13.3MB 20MB 37.5MB 62MB

720p is the lightest form of of 'HD' and is a popular resolution. For every 5
minutes of 720p video footage on YouTube you're using up around 37.5MB of data.

In 2012, the average YouTube viewer watched 6 hours of video per month.
YouTube has since stopped publishing this statistic, but does claim that the
number of hours watched by users goes up by 50% annually.

At 720p that long-surpassed 6 hours would have come to around 2.7GB of usage.
This is a drop in the ocean for a big 100GB cap, but something smaller like a
wireless 3G or 4G plan it can be devastating.


It also goes beyond YouTube. Videos are embedded in everything from online
newspapers to review sites and even Facebook. It all adds up, so be mindful if
you have a limited cap when it comes to video content.

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During the summer, our oldest teen was basically using YouTube as background noise watching stuff while playing online games. That Sh__ stopped real quick.

I have essentially digitized my entire DVD/Blue Ray collection, and I can tell you a Blue ray feature film runs upwards of 20-36 GB. A DVD feature is between 4 and 8 GB. And that is just for the track that contains the film and the audio. Of course it has audio in other languages on the other track but that shouldn't account for much of the data in the track. A feature film is around 2 - 3 hours? Imagine streaming that from the internet.

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Originally Posted by th3w01f

I was talking to my wife about it and she said the kids had 3 different episodes of the same show streaming on 3 different TVs yesterday afternoon.

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Do you have multiple Netflix accounts? The normal account only allows 2 devices to be streaming at the same time.

I just jumped through all sorts of hoops just to get access to their website so I could check my internet usage. We watch about an hours worth of NetFlix a night and we're only at 34gb so far this month.... I also log into my office remotely or over a vpn 5-10x a month...

Another thing to look into is if any of the people in your house have gotten into Skype or another similar voice and video chat service. The video quality setting might be at the maximum.

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Originally Posted by RCCrawler

Do you have multiple Netflix accounts? The normal account only allows 2 devices to be streaming at the same time.

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Looks like you can go to 4 now but we are only at two, she must not have realized that one had been disconnected. Thanks for the heads up.

Apparently I need to watch more porn.. i'm using 50g/month

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Originally Posted by Monky

Apparently I need to watch more porn.. i'm using 50g/month

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Apparently a lot more, at decent resolution that's only about 30 min a day. [panic]

Youtube is brutal, I just watched my son look up a few minecraft videos..... 350MB of data.

Using 100GB to 120Gb per month. Only have it for internet and do not use for other services.

Quick question about Comcast accounts. I have internet and TV but never signed up for TV service and do not have a cable box. Can I ask to turn off the TV account or is that part of a speed upgrade for Comcast? Hate to have to call their customer service and I can not find anything on the web site to just have internet.

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Originally Posted by SamuraiCO

Using 100GB to 120Gb per month. Only have it for internet and do not use for other services.

Quick question about Comcast accounts. I have internet and TV but never signed up for TV service and do not have a cable box. Can I ask to turn off the TV account or is that part of a speed upgrade for Comcast? Hate to have to call their customer service and I can not find anything on the web site to just have internet.

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They give a discount if you bundle. It may have been less expensive to get both when you signed up. I'd either cancel the video or get one of the "dumb" boxes. You might get one free, otherwise they're just a couple bucks a month. This would be for what used to be "Basic Cable". Either way why pay for something you're not using. It may only save you 5 bucks to cancel the video. 5 busks is still 5 bucks.

I'm somewhat surprised at how much data some of these sites use, I guess I shouldn't be but I still am.

Got home at about 9PM, made dinner and looked up some houses on Zillow (mainly looking at pics). The iPad we were using logged almost 2GB in that hour on Zillow; that's roughly 4Mbps for the entire hour.

No Netflix and no porn and we've logged about 5GB since I started this thread.

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Originally Posted by SamuraiCO

Using 100GB to 120Gb per month. Only have it for internet and do not use for other services.

Quick question about Comcast accounts. I have internet and TV but never signed up for TV service and do not have a cable box. Can I ask to turn off the TV account or is that part of a speed upgrade for Comcast? Hate to have to call their customer service and I can not find anything on the web site to just have internet.

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Ah, Blast Plus.
It's "Blast"(105mbps down) internet bundled with economy video. (basic plus a few chans). The primary (non-hd) cable box is free if you want it. If you are still in the promotion period, It's a decent deal. If not, drop the video.

We're fairly heavy users and we're having a heavy month at 140GB so far. I can't imagine what 700GB usage would look like. Are you trying to make a backup copy of the Internet over there? [Coffee]

Oh, kids are involved. All bets are off. Everything is at their fingertips and it's delivered by magic.[Alrigh]

A better question is why do you care as it has no cap...

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Originally Posted by sportbikeco

A better question is why do you care as it has no cap...

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Because they have rolled out caps and additional usage fees in many areas and I think it's just a matter of time.

Looks like I use 200-500gb a month.

i highly doubt they will add any bandwidth limitations or tiered data plans, those are dead. Plus they are increasing speed and laying fiber in town, they killed the 250gb cap (that wasn't even enforced) a few years ago.