hellO there! my names Phil and i hav a sneaking suspicion that my internet it being used by a Haker. ok well im on a 3 gig plan with "Oputs" (australian isp) and 22 days into the month i get an email stating that i have reached my 3 gig limit and an now locked on 28k. But i only downloaded a 800mb movie & did some light internet browsing this month. (also havnt sent any large emails or recived any) Also now that im on 28k i cant play internet games. Whilst in the past when i breeched my 3 gig i still had the ability to play online games with low Latency (ping) of around 20-50. When i try now i get Latency (ping) of 800. im certain that my cable is been used by some1 else. Is that possible? can someone PLZ help me!!!? if so hav u any idea wot is wronge? or any tips ? PS> i dont hav any firewalls or virus protection stuff. but i intalled NortonAnti-Virus 2002 and it said my Status is critical. see im of wif some s---ty little viruses on my comp. but ones that eat up my internet. >8^( thats just naughty

hello sounds like some ones logging into your acount and useing it!!!!!!!!!!!

so change my password any otehr tips ?

Yah start with these: AdAware SpyBot HijackThis When you run these be careful what you delete. 1 rule of thumb, if you find something that has an uninstall listing in Add/Remove programs, remove them that way. these routines are ruthless in their pursuit of nasties and you could crash your system if you remove the wrong things. be very mindful of registry changes. and then use this: Kerio Actually, the firewall would let you see the intruder's activity unless..... You wouldn't by any chance be using a wireless connection (network) would you?

Nope, you did it. While you are measuring the size of the actual file, the ISP is measuring the total number of bytes in all the packets received by you. Each data packet has a whole bunch of header, routing and CRC check characters with them. Then you have to add in the 5% or so for re-transmitted packets that have errors. With a typical MTU of 1500 characters per packet, that 800MB file cost you well over 1G. Now it if passed though (or your system is still set for dial-up MTU) a router set for dial-up networks, the packets get broken up into much smaller ones, but the headers size per packet stays the same. In this case that one file cost you over 1.5G. Then there is all those port probes from worms, virus and hackers. I get almost 1Mb of this random trash a day. This gets measured against you as long as your Cable Modem is powered on. (Make sure it off when not using it.) Note, with Cable, they are measuring packets sent to you based on the MAC address of the Modem, which is unique to your modem, so no one is hacking into their ATM network and logging on with your ID. Even with light browsing, it could be costing you 1MB per page, due to the ADs and images. So make sure you browser cache is large (over several hundred MB) and that it is not refreshing the whole page every time you click on it. You may need to find a utility that counts all the traffic coming into your system. And you need to check the MTU size settings. When you get full bandwidth back, run a test at www.dslreports.com/tweaks to get a measurement of MTU size and other useful things (you want it 1500 if you can get it), and Path MTU Discovery ON. I have heard of this type of ISP forcing MTU to the dial-up 576 MTU size so that extra over head gets send. If this is the case, the above link has some tips on how to determing what your ISP/Networks real MTU is and how to set yours, so that your packets never get fragmented (which causes even more overhead). I would spend a lot of time learning about all this, so you can get the most out of your small limit. (I think I use your limit almost every day! But I am on a Cable optimized for MTU 1500 packets. AOL DSL users have to force their MTU to 1400 as that is what AOL's system is setup for.