I have a question involving the internet and there are people around here who seem knowledgeable. The small business I work at has been having trouble with the internet, being unable to bring up a page or access different things. We called the company that provides us with internet to find out what was up, and they said we were starting to max out our bandwidth. It seems what we have with them is a T1 and they said our company must have out grown it's original needs when it was first installed, and would we like to buy some more? The thing is we haven't grown in any way as far as internet or phones are concerned, we have two computers in the office that are basically for email. Sometimes a third laptop is connected to send something from that, but it's very rare. We are not a tech heavy company, in fact the owners have a hard time figuring out how to even use a computer most times.
So anyone have an idea of what's going on? Is it just the basic needs of the internet growing? Could the company we are dealing with be trying to scam us? Or is there something else I should be looking for? The company we are dealing with was kind enough to send us a graphed report of some of our past usage to show us that what they were saying was true. Of course it was completely incomprehensible to anyone outside that company. (and probably inside as well). For all we know the graph could have been on the course of the first moonshot. Even the guy we usually contract for technical support said it was gibberish.
Comments
T1
T1? Are you serious? Have you checked your package's monthly unit? Did you perhaps take a cheaper package in which you shared your connection with other companies? If you do share your connection with others, then you've been scammed. T1 goes directly to you, it's not shared, though people can jack up to your line at your company. I've lived in dorm that use a T1 connection. I was able to download gigabytes' worth of anime, movies, songs and serials daily, and there were 200 people living in the dorm sharing the same connection, probably doing the same thing I did.
But are you sure they said bandwidth and not monthly quota? It makes more sense that you can't access high data transfer sites like youtube because you maxed out your bandwidth. But you also said you use a T1. So neither bandwidth limit nor monthly quota make much of a sense.
Check with your local tech community, maybe they know something about the company. If they are a legitimate company, then the only sensible explanation I can think of is that someone stole your bandwidth. If that's true, it's entirely possible that you've been using half or even a quarter of your bandwidth.
I'm not an IT expert, but even with that possibility, it can't possibly happen to a T1.
A Possible Answer?
Does anybody on your network use SKYPE or is it installed on any of the machines ? I may be out of date but if it is set as a node ( the traditional default) it will eat bandwidth like there is no tomorrow. Increasing the bandwidth just ups its consumption. I have seen an unlimited data 60 Gig network that I ran brought to its knees by skype. I hear Skype may have improved and now the NODE mode can be turned off. However if it is not it will eat your bandwidth even when no one is actually using it. The old Skype needed to be uninstalled to kill it!!!! That is why it is banned on may UK Company and academic networks.
I hope this helps.
Nightjar
Streaming audio or video will
Streaming audio or video will eat into bandwidth on a massive scale.
That said, with your description, I would lean towards it being malware that's using up your bandwidth.
Here's what you can do to do some testing.
1) Change your wireless key. This will make sure someone isn't using it from outside your office.
2) On the router, go to the firewall or allowed application section, and disallow -outbound- port 25. Your systems should be sending email through port 587 or 465; servers communicate with each other through port 25. If you're infected with a spambot, that'll put the kibosh on it in a hurry.
3) Disconnect everything from your internet connection but a single laptop or desktop, and test your internet speed. You could even contact your provider and plug in one machine at a time until they say the bandwidth is maxing out.
MRTG graphs do look like gibberish unless you're used to reading them.
Feel free to ask me questions directly - unless you're in Texas, I won't be able to go there in person and check things out, but I can do email :)
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
The most common bandwidth surge
The most common bandwidth surge is caused by malware [viruses, trojans, browser plugins, exploits, keyloggers, and many more]. The most common I've found are browser plugins and 'search engine' add-ins.
You can install software to monitor bandwidth usage. Malware can also prevent or delay unreasonably the loading of pages.
The easiest way to get rid of malware is not to detect it and remove it... but to reformat and reinstall windows. This way you are guaranteed to be malware free. However if you do this... disconnect or shutdown your lan to prevent computers on your lan infecting each other.
We had something like this in a small software house I worked with. It took 4 days before the techs realised the other computers were re-infecting the cleaned computers.
Dayna.
Both true and not. I have one
Both true and not.
I have one customer with Conficker - I'll be removing that today. It'll require me to shut down the network and hit each machine individually to find the core infection.
Will I reinstall the computers? no. That's unnecessary, and wasteful. A clean install is the easiest way to make sure you have no infection remaining, yes - at least, if you use a hard drive scrubber to nail the boot sector first. However, depending on what you have on the machines in the way of documents and software, as well as the relative skill level of your technician or yourself (to backup and restore), can make a reinstall detrimental.
In general, standard malware infections do _not_ eat bandwidth. Zombie/Trojan infections that turn your machine into zombies _do_ eat bandwidth. See above.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
T1 Line Bandwidth
By definition, a T1 provides 1.544 Mbps, full duplex. (The equivalent European specification is the E1, which provides 2.048 Mbps.)
However, sometimes "T1" is used incorrectly to mean a full-duplex business-class (which usually means "better bandwidth guarantee") circuit, or possibly even something else. You need to make sure what you're getting from your vendor.
Even on a shared trunk like DOCSIS, any modern day connection will give you better performance for a home user than a T1.
'T1' lines are not the cutting edge they once were and many people have better download speeds at home these days. For example, I have 80Mbits down/16Mbits up with a 250Gb capacity all for $40/month.
Another alternative
Maybe a business-class cable internet connection, if available. T1 is a standard for the Telephone Company that bundles multiple 24 - 64Kbps channels (roughly equivalent to 24 modem connections) to yield the 1.5Mbps connection speed.
It's already been said that
It's already been said that their needs and usage patterns haven't changed in the last year. With the number of computers stated, there shouldn't be a constant overload on the connection.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
mrtg
You cant really say the load is constant without looking at an mrtg or similar usage graph. Is there perchance a wifi router on the line secured or not someone may have hijacked it.
Generally, providers don't
Generally, providers don't talk about maxing out your connection until you've been doing it on a regular basis. It was also mentioned that it's being slow a large part of the time.
I've also mentioned the 'change the wireless password'.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
Need a clarification
T1 bandwidth is "maxed out" means you will be slower uploading downloading. Think of it as a highway. You have bumper to bumper traffic going or coming, or possibly both. That is bandwidth.
If they claimed you were "maxed out" on gigabytes that is like a toll road.You purchased tickets for twenty company vehicles to travel the toll road each month. You are fine as long as one to twenty vehicles travel each month but someone took the pass out of the company vehicle and started using it in their own car several times a month. Toll company complains you are using the toll road more than you agreed.
Personally if the net provider doesn't know the difference between bandwidth and gigabytes I'd change providers. Usually T1 providers are extremely generous with gigabytes. They get testy with college kids uploading, downloading, sharing movies and music. Big chunks of megabytes and hogs the highway (bandwidth)
Check for virus, that includes "root virus". This MUST be done with a CD or USB card working outside your hard drive and your system software. It will set up its own system on boot, disable the hard drive system and scan memory, BIOS, and all drives. Anything less and you're whistling past the graveyard hoping you are checking for bugs.
Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl
It's the bandwidth, I made
It's the bandwidth, I made sure to get that part right. In either case our business uses so little of both that it doesn't matter, something fishy is going on.
Wow about doing it with a floppy disk? :P
Yes, our company still uses them. I'm going to have to hit the antique stores pretty soon to replenish our supplies. At least I understand what you're talking about with root viruses and BIOS... being about to do anything like that or what others have suggested on the other hand... not without a lot more difficulty and frustration than it's worth to me. It's hard to fix a problem with a computer when the resource you are using to help you figure out how to do that is itself the computer.
"Open crate with crowbar supplied within the crate."
Wow! If you shake a tree
Wow! If you shake a tree around BigCloset you must have techies fall out, I don't think I've ever had so many people respond to one of my infrequent blogs. :P
Generally I'm getting the picture that something is going on here beyond the simple explanation the internet company gave us, from what ya'll are saying. I want to check my emails tomorrow to see if I missed or got anything wrong from what they said, so I hope ya'll will check up on this blog once it's off the front page to give me some more advice.
I can see this is going to be difficult problem for me, more because of the people I am working for than anything else. They're not big on technology, no, that's an understatement, really they deal as well with technology as other people would deal with quantum physics taught by a bratty 12 year old with a superiority complex and a lisp. So trying to explain to them anything beyond how to plug in a computer is going to be extremely hard. And unfortunately I don't have much faith with the IT guy we use. He seems to just know the basics and be about 10 years behind the curve. It was when he told me a password to get into something that really made wonder how he still had his job. I won't say what that password was here, but if you read the lists of the worst passwords people use each year the one he gave me is probably on there somewhere...several years in a row. Of course, it's not like I'm any great shakes at computers either, I just have the kind of general knowledge that someone who grew up in the dawn... scratch that, the 9:30 to 10:00ish of the computer age has.*
I'm going to have to see what options I have, our business is out a ways on the edge of town and when we first signed up with our present internet company they were the only show in town if you wonted something more than dial-up. I'll have to check and see if maybe in the intervening time someone else hasn't come into our area. Just the fact that we would tell them we only have two computers with very light use, and (presuming I read right that it was a T1) they would just tell use we need to buy more bandwidth, smacks of them not caring that something might not be right with the picture and only caring about getting more money out of us.
So all in all, more headache for me, and trying to convince my boss that just unplugging the computer and plugging it back in will not fix the problem.
Please stay tuned, even when this is off the front page, otherwise I might have to learn to do everything at the office by hand and with regular mail because my boss throw everything electronic into the dumpster. And since I'm only half trained and just starting to have to deal with the accounting to begin with, I really don't want to have to learn to do the books with actual physical books....besides my hand writing is horrible.
Thanks guys and gals. :)
*By the way, what ever happened to never giving out your identity or any personal information on the internet?** That rule seems to have been beaten to a bloody pulp then mounted on some 19th century adventurers club wall as a trophy, these days.
**Presumably because the internet was full of weirdos and perverts*** who wanted to rape you.
***The weirdos and perverts part actually turned out to be true, but since it ended up in reality that you were part of that group it didn't matter as much. I'm still waiting for the rapping part though...
Here's something you _can_ do
Here's something you _can_ do without IT help.
http://www.thewindowsclub.com/bootable-antivirus-rescue-cd-w...
(there are also a number of other options. Google 'antivirus rescue disk' )
Download the image, burn it to a cd (they'll all have instructions), and boot a computer off of the cd. Run the scanner on the hard drive of the computer. Let it do its thing.
Go to the next machine and repeat. You can even do all of the machines at once if you make enough disks.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
A few things to try
have you run a speed test? If not google speed test and run one. Post your upload and download and latency results.
Are your connections wired or wireless?
A failing NIC (network interface card) can send TONS of junk transmissions dragging performance into the toilet. Disconnect every computer except for 1 and see what happens. Do the disconnect at the router. If there is a separate switch, try plugging 1 computer directly into the router. Try the other computer too.
Speed test each configuration.
For wireless connections, external interference can trash performance. Think microwave oven, cordless phone, florescent lights, neighbors setting up their new wi-fi on your channel . . ..
test your internal network. Copy large files from one computer to another and time the transfer. How many megabytes in how many minutes. For this to work, only large files, and internal hard drive on one computer to internal hard drive on the other.
Some newer routers include a traffic monitor. This can tell you your daily usage and let you know if there is unauthorized use occurring.