About MarkJFine

Follow up: Tried rebooting in case the internal DNS was a mess... no joy.   In case anyone is interested, Google's open IPv6 DNS servers are at:     2001:4860:4860::8888     2001:4860:4860::8844 They seem to work just fine. ... View more

@rest066c Couldn't hurt going the cat5 (ethernet) route if you can, since it takes any possible wifi incompatibility variables such as mode (a/n/ac, etc.) out of the equation. I'm getting great speeds on my 360 going direct. Pulled a 6.5GB game down in ~20 minutes flat just the other day!   If you prefer to experiment with different connections, try varying the modes, bandwidths and channels until you get something that works well. If you have a wifi scanner on your computer that tells you who else is using the channels in the area, that could be a bonus, since it would help debug your setup and help you avoid interference from someone else; e.g., 802.11ac uses up to 4 full wifi channels for max bandwidth/speed that it needs on the HT2000W. ... View more

Inadvertently found that the data amounts taken from Mac's Activity Monitor were using binary rather than base-10 for MB and GB (basically does a netstat and divdes bytes by 1024^2 to get MB, 1024^3 for GB). This immediately accounts for it being 4.85% lower than the amount found in Usage Meter.   Just in case anyone was looking. ... View more

@Pete_Vit The part that Talos isn't showing on that link is that the IP is coming up as a hit on six of the 105 spam lists. Even though spamhaus and spamcop are the most used the IP doesn't seem to appear on their list. Regardless, sorbs is widely used and Hughes really should try to fix it.   Chances are what's happening is what's called 'Zombie Spam', where someone on the network has a phone or computer with a virus or malware that's "using" their email credentials to proxy into the HughesNet email system upon demand. It's a huge problem and I see a lot of it on the receiving end of that spam coming through my server every day.   For Tech Support's info, here are the lists that the IP is listed on: ... View more

Lol... I hear ya. And I'd never look a gift horse... yeah I would. ... View more

But wait... there's more... lol Started adding an odometer-type thing on the right hand side of that spreadhseet with a macro that "bulbs" it so I can look at specific time periods. I added a button to start the macro and Microsoft wanted me to download about 90MB of extra fonts and stuff, which I did. But HughesNet ignored it all. So... I have no idea what's going on.  Digital Karma? ... View more

@C0RR0SIVE Thing is, if the app downloaded the video in the background, it would also show as accumulating bandwidth on my Mac, which it didn't. The delta was between the change in Mac's Activity Monitor and the change shown in Usage Meter.   Should add that my Mac was the only thing connected to the router when it occurred. All other phones, iPads, DirecTV boxes, TVs, etc. were taken off the network earlier this morning so any testing wouldn't be corrupted.   Had started a workbook as well, which is how I've been able to track this. The difference in question is the part highlighted with the red oval here, which occurred before 8am:   I too initially suspected that the rise in usage was related to a rise in speed. I'm really loving that part of it. It's the large variances that we can't explain that I'm really not so find of. The issue being that if we can't manage the variance, we really can't manage usage. The thought of overrunning the monthly data is making me obsess over it a little. And by "a little" I really mean "a lot". lol ... View more

I may have stumbled onto what's going on.   Did over 2GB of updates this morning and everything tracked perfectly fine. Even waited around 15 minutes of settling time to see if there was anything residual. After that, there might have been around 5MB difference, but at that point it's practically in the noise.   Then I got PM'd on Slack, which is a workspace coordination tool with "rooms". As I was going through the rooms, someone had posted a couple of tweets with videos of a nasty fire in London. Boom. Nearly instant differential of 120MB even though I didn't play them.   It could just be timing, but it's quite possible that as part of the video compression (video savings?) scheme, they are pre-caching (and converting?) small links to mpeg files. It would be a terrible bug if they are then attributing the internet-side bandwidth of pre-caching to your account, even if they don't then transfer a video stream to you on the satellite side.   Not saying this is the case, but it's a possible explanation that might be worth looking at. Not even sure how you test it other than maybe turning off the video savings setting for a day and see if it continues. <Throws up hands, as I had between 3-400MB go out the window yesterday> ... View more

Pro tip: If you want to save a boatload of data on Apple products, kill the handoff feature. Your devices will shut down a lot quicker too. Found this nasty bugger just now. ... View more

Maybe better off with left and right scales to make both easier to see. Something to be said about comparing burn rates in the first one, too. ... View more

Just because I opened my mouth, today it seems to be behaving. Been as expected all morning. ... View more

More recommendations: 1. The bubbles in the progress bar should be filled with the window background, so they don't make a mess when they overlap: yeah... I finished downloading Assassin's Creed III from XBL this morning using ethernet cable... think it averaged close to 60Mbps, but that's another thread entirely.   2. the usage history does some really weird thing where it caches all of the data one time during the day, and stays that way. Even worse is if you display it right after midnight, it caches the entire day with no data... that's a bad thing. Might be a good idea to use the data from the Usage Meter to dynamically update today's totals in the Usage History... as such: (I had to redo this one so the amount is less, where the 9MB went I have no idea).   3. It would also be nice to put the daily usage back too: This way you can see where things go out of whack, like when I downloaded the rest of ACIII this morning. Also, rather than splitting the daily data in terms of download and upload, which is not real helpful, you can use the deltas from the arrays in the first chart to derive this. There's a trap in doing that, because people change plans in the middle of cycles, etc, but this is just a rapid prototyping exercise for me.   Comments?   ... View more

@GabeU Been thinking about this for the past few days, because I'm still seeing several unexplained discrepancies in data when only my laptop is involved. At least there I can see what both the machine and network sees in a head-to-head comparison (and primarily why I've been playing with the usage monitor).   Although those connection errors may be a contributor for me, it still doesn't explain what happens the times when those errors don't occur. Instead, I'm seeing a trend where the discrepancies are larger when images are involved - even small ones like twitter avis.   For example: File downloads for the most part seem to be similar in size. In fact, I downloaded an 800MB update to Xcode this morning and it checked out nearly perfect. The same is true for sites that are mostly text based with a smattering javascript and css. However, as soon as you start to hit sites with images on them, the discrepancy between what your machine and the network thinks transferred really starts to explode.   I've not tested anything with video yet, mostly because it's become so DNA-level ingrained from years of avoiding that on this network. I'm sure it works well now, but I got a cheap unlimited plan on my phone last Feb, so I use that as a personal hotspot for streaming whenever I can wrangle 1 or 2 bars of LTE. ... View more

Follow-up: Set the HT2000Ws 2GHz wifi to 11g-only and retested. Saw higher upload speeds (over 5Mbps) bit better download speeds (~11Mbps), negotiating an 54Mbps channel w/100% signal. Think this is the best it's going to do going this way.   Note: I tried 11b-only as well, and that wouldn't even connect - could this the problem that the others are having?   So, either the combination of all of them or 11n was partly the low-speed culprit. Going to WEP is not an option, since it's not supoprted.   Still sticking with ethernet in the meantime for anything serious. ... View more

If I can add: If you're getting errors during the network setup, ignore them if it's at least getting past the internet stage. It has to do with the way the system is double-NATed. The internet part will still work.   Tried to download a game this morning during the Bonus period and saw I was getting around ~4.8Mbps through the 2GHz wifi (XBox 360 doesn't see the 5GHz one). It was a 7.6GB game so a 5 hours download wait was a non-starter. Saw this thread and decided to investigate:   1. When going through the 2GHz channel I'm getting really high upload speeds (over 3Mbps) but lower than expected download speeds (~4.8Mbps), negotiating an 12Mbps channel even though it has 100% signal.   2. Decided to try going through my legacy Cisco router that's still there for the older game adapter I'm using as the point for the downstairs DirecTV box. Despite high latency (over 1000ms) I'm getting the same upload, but much higher download speeds (21.2Mbps), negotiating an 54Mbps channel.   3. "Borrowed" the ethernet cable that I use for a co-located DirecTV box in my office and saw better upload speeds (5Mbps) and even higher download speeds (33.9Mbps).   I've tried toggling the UPnP (as @Liz suggested on another thread) on both routers, as well as toggling Web Acceleration. All done independently and together, and no combination made much of a difference.   21 and 34Mbps is somewhat acceptible given the speed rating is about that, but its a little disconcerting considering the 40-50Mbps speeds I'm getting through the 5GHz router port. Could just be the time of day or conditions at the other end.   That said, it almost seems as if there is some kind issue with the XBox 360 and the HT2000W's 2GHz wifi - at least in my setup. In theory, the only difference between them is: Cisco    HT2000W WEP        WAP2  b/g*          b/g/n * Cisco has n mode only on its 5GHz port, not it's 2GHz one.   Hope this helps somebody. ... View more

Something like... this: I also dropped the font size on the bubbles from 12 to 11 so they wouldn't wrap so easily. ... View more

@C0RR0SIVE I agree with the plan available stuff as it tends to make it look cramped. I only left it in MB for completeness, but didn't want to leave it out completely. Perhaps changing it to GB, as you say, but adding it to the section title in a lighter gray in the same way as the plan dates are shown for the DATA CYCLE USAGE below, like: I SERVICE PLAN DATA - 30 GB, and I BONUS ZONE - 50 GB That would certainly lighten things up and keep all the plan data consistent.   Have you found the part where the plan dates jump around like the old one used to? Think theres a bug in the way they establish the date ranges. Found part of it when I was calculating minutes remaining and it was a day short. ... View more

@GabeUHeh... the code for the progress bar is actually still there, they just commented out the call to it.   @LizThanks Liz. That was actually a working mock-up from v6.6.1 with a few html, stylesheet and javascript modifications. Had to make new bubble images for the progress bar tho. Hopefully nobody minds and I certainly can provide a tarball of the mods if the developers want it.   What's really good about this is it allows me to check overall usage in great detail without actually adding any usage via the web site or iOS app. ... View more

@GabeUYeah, it's kind of hard to describe. These aren't really problems that you'd notice over the course of a day unless you saw a blip in that page. And, it may very well not be it at all.   There is a common denominator somewhere though because it was what prompted me last month to start hunting down where it was possibly coming from... before they stopped resetting the counter every day. We were burning it at a pace that would run out of anytime data in a period of 15-20 days, which would have driven me bonkers. ... View more

@GabeUAs I was previously testing, I noticed several times when there was an unusual amount of transmit problems  (error 12.1.9) and response longer than expected errors (error 30.3.4). You can check all the errors detected by using your browser to get to the state code monitor part of the modem's built-in s/w: http://192.168.0.1/limited.html#!/state_code/state_code_monitor (use the IP you normally use instead of 192.168.0.1).   I've also seen some discrepancies that seemed to happen around the same time as these errors. So here's my theory: When this (or similar error happens) the modem (or the user device itself) sees it as an nack and tries to resend packets until it finally gets a response instead of being in a wait state. I'm just pulling this out of thin air, as it could be anything, really. I previously had something similar on Gen4 during the summer, when some trees had leaves on them - I finally cut down the trees. Since the dish needed to be re-angled for Gen5, it's possible that another tree is causing my issue, but the signal quality numbers don't seem to reflect that.   Maybe this is something one of the lab sites can have a better look at, because it appears to be a common thread. ... View more

I use Firefox, even though it has some really annoying things. I keep Flash set to "ask" and even on the rare occasion that I tell it to remember to always run on a site, it keeps asking anyway - so I just ignore the request banners anymore. If it worked correctly, I'd want something similar for authorizing redirects because there are several IP-checking sites that I use that blow up if you don't hit "ok" fast enough. Safari is a last resort backup for the rare time a site doesn't work properly on FF. I use Chrome occasionally, but mainly just to look for Wordpress plugin and theme compatibility issues on Daily Cannon. I also still use Adblock Plus, but only because I've just never looked for anything better. It works good enough. Too many sites are using blocker detection anymore making it harder to employ. Unfortunately it's usually the ones that employ high-revenue (RPM) autostart video ads and there's no way around it to use the site. I guess they really want the click revenue. lol ... View more

Incidentally, I'm still investigating data draw to see where most of it is coming from. For example, I used to leave Slack and TweetDeck running continuously as they used to run very lean - maybe 100MB/day if I was lucky.   I stopped using the Slack app after I saw it suck down half a gig in one shot once and the Slack tech staff were unable to figure out why. That's been relegated to the web version which has very little draw, maybe a 1MB/hr or so.   As for TweetDeck, not sure when that became such a data hog, but it seems to do with the images. Could have been when Twitter reduced the limitation on image size. Startup was around 6MB between inital code download (it's web-based app so you essentially download the functional code every time you start it) and column images. I use 9 columns between personal and the accounts I use to support an Arsenal-based website (free plug for the Daily Cannon). Found that hiding attached media for each tweet reduces the data drain significantly - as in a factor of ten.   I don't use Facebook, but my wife does and I'd wished she didn't. I've had her make autostarting of videos stop, which they conveniently move around so you can't find that option. It still is a huge data drain, but... one thing at a time. ... View more

@cybercycle1- Yeah it would be interesting as I'm seeing the 5GHz router is quite a bit sensitive. The range is fairly good, but it likes to disappear at the slightest fluctuation. Disappear, as in not just signal-wise - literally just goes away, and sometimes takes the 2.4GHz router with it. I'm also experiencing it getting jammed everyonce in a while. If you already have a 1000Mb 5GHz router that does 802.11n/ac, you might want to go with that. ... View more

Ok, so after disabling "Find my..." on several devices (as well as a few other adjustments) the big drops in data have stopped. It's all pretty much manageable again.   Only a couple of other weirdness items still (e.g., several hard reboots to get the 2000W's internal wifi routers working properly and why I see several transmission errors a day), but those are another topic and not nearly as critical.   Thanks all. ... View more

@GabeU- Very true. There should be a way to rotate access logs for these things like you have in Linux (which MacOS is based upon). And, just to add to this thought, MacOS has several crons that it kicks off for maintenance purposes where things just start and end on a regular schedule. Some may use internet bandwidth that gets zeroed out in the top part of the display after the process ends so you have no idea how it's been added to the total data received in the bottom part - just that something "happened".   Another Apple-ism that I'm thinking about this morning are dealing with app updates on the various iDevices we have. At some point iOS decided it wasn't going to allow users to copy apps that was originally downloaded/installed on their iDevice back to their computer's iTunes repository during a sync. This is problematic because say you installed an app on your iPhone that you now want on your iPad, and the provider (stupidly, imo) updates that 200MB app on a weekly basis (looking at you, LinkedIn). This becomes a 600MB update as you are now independently having to download it once on your computer, once on your iPhone, and another time on your iPad.   The ultimate solution is to refrain from doing anything with app maintenance on either iDevice. This way you just update it once on your computer then regularly sync it to your iPhone and iPad so you're not wasting bandwidth. Even if you've used your phone's new unlimited LTE to download it, you still don't have a copy of it on your computer's repository, so you end up having to download it again ayway - still wasteful. Been trying to get my wife used to this procedure to no avail and have just spent about 5GB of Bonus allocation to fixing some of this.   Except, I just found this out today... A word of caution if there is an app (or apps) on your iDevice that isn't also on your computer and you download it/them to your computer to try to do a "bulk sync": This might not initially work until you physically tell iTunes to update each specific app on that device. Just to make this process even more annoying, you have to connect the device, go into that device's application list in iTunes on your computer, and click "Update" for each of these silly things that you just downloaded, then hit Apply - it won't be done automatically by just hitting Sync from the Summary.   Remains to be seen if this is just a one-time thing or this persists ad nauseum. If this isn't the most painful thing ever... ... View more

GabeU - For MacOS, the Network section of Activity Monitor (Applications/Utilities) is a great tool to see what running applications are using what bandwidth, as well as how much has been used since boot. Good for isolating it from everything else. It's actually how I determined the big 1GB leak wasn't coming from my machine. iOS devices have something similar, but only for cellular bandwidth (Settings/Cellular), so a little harder to detect. maratsade - Yes, it is frustrating when they change your settings. Apple not only reset the settings to default in the latest rendition of iOS 10, they actually moved "Find my..." when they moved the iCloud settings under your name at the top (in addition to Privacy->Location Services). This makes it that much harder to even find it to turn it back off. ... View more

Yup. I've had most of those things turned off, especially the background refresh. I only use that for things that I need to use in the background, such as Runkeeper and other excercise trackers, and some music/podcast players that I use while I run. Everything else I also ensure are not even loaded by swiping it out of the background. Good to know about the wifi calls too, since cell service in my area is real spotty. As for the leaks themselves, so far so good. Not to jinx myself, but have only used ~250MB today with no unexpected surprises. It could very well have been the four devices phoning home to Apple all along, but I'm still waiting to see what happens when some other devices are used to rule that in as the solution. ... View more

Cheers cybercycle1... completely forgot about that. Turns out "Find My..."was turned on my iPhone and 2 iPads but not my two MBPs. So, that could have definitely contributed. All of those are now turned off. Have also taken to looking at the Activity Monitor on both MBPs to look for Data Received spikes under "Network" to try and isolate those. One machine was on all day and didn't register anything close to a 1GB, so that's good to know. Forgot to check the other before it was turned off. We only use iCloud for the simple things like notes, calendars, reminders and contacts. No drive, photos, backups or anything (and especially not keychain). ... View more