Why Does Your Modem Send As Much Data As It Receives?????

Why does a modem send as much data as it receives. I have called my carries and asked this question. I can't get a straight answer. One says it's something to do with the browser and the other says it's the sites I visit but the fact is no matter what site I visit the modem sends at leaste 90% as much data as it receives and sometimes even more. I don't do uploads often. Regardless the numbers I see are not during sessions with uploading taking place.

Have anyone of you taken a peek at your connection stats? Take a look.

reply to post by CherubBaby


Every action has an opposite reaction.
Or maybe its just spyware and tracking, you only need to visit one site that tracks you to have it recieving data from every bit you download.

reply to post by WakeUpRiseUp


That all sounds fine and dandy but not according to my internet firewalls and the carrier. I have no male/spy/tracking ware on this pc( Supposedly ) hey but I guess it's not important since the thread was instantly moved to a computer help forum. ( within 5 minutes ) I guess the fact that I don't need help with the pc is not the issue. I only built them for a major manufacturer for 3 years.

Because even thought a request for a web page is somthing like :

You: Hey, give me default.html
Them: Ok, here it is.

That is then followed by oh, give me advertisement.js and image.png and image2.png.. etc.

Even then that's not the whole story.. every single transmission (of which a single image can be made up of several chunks) is a receive and confirm operation.

When it comes to mobile data, these confirm parts are ignored for billing... but they are still there.

reply to post by rogerstigers


That sounds great but it never was like this before. I don't buy if and it's not correct. I will tell you what it is . It is the illegal transfer of data from the pc to Big Brother. There is no way that the address HTML is given and then the pics and advertisement generated back to the carrier. What is the carrier wanting pictures for. Its not what you think. If it were the carries owe alot of refunds to millions of people for requestion data that the customers have never authorized pics, personal whatever. As I type this the modem is sending more data than it is receiving and I have not left this site. Go figure. packets sent 46,136 packets received 16,089

Packets send 1,141,716.......packets received 1,589,822

Now how is that possible when my DSL speed test shows
Last Result:
Download Speed: 1326 kbps (165.8 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 322 kbps (40.3 KB/sec transfer rate)
The download to upload ratio is 4 to 1 but the packet rate is ratio is about 1.3 to 1

Our computers send and receive a lot more that we will ever know.

reply to post by CherubBaby

For simple web browsing, youtube, etc you should be seeing something like 90% down, 10% up (average). 90% up is not good. You either have a virus, someone is downloading files somehow (torrents?) or some other nefarious "purpose".

Install a packet sniffer (Wireshark, open source) and see if you can see if the packets are originating from your pc.

As an example, here are my modem statistics:

Uptime: 18 days, 16:03:38
Data Transferred (Sent/Received) [GB/GB]: 4,07 / 187,65

I rarely upload so don't even reach the 10% mark and I have downloaded quite a few dvd's via usenet lately which is probably the bulk of my traffic. Hope it helps and be safe.

ETA It could also be someone hitching a ride on your wi-fi. Thats also a possibility. Your modem should tell you who is connected to it via wi-fi so that should be easy enough to check.

reply to post by LightSpeedDriver


I appreciate the info for a packet sniffer. Below is a capture I did 20 mins ago after restarting the connection.




Here is one I just took notice the data dload and upload is almost identical since the last captue above




What do you think?

reply to post by CherubBaby


Mine receives more. Your modems broke.

reply to post by mnmcandiez


Another pointless contribution

Originally posted by CherubBaby
Why does a modem send as much data as it receives. I have called my carries and asked this question. I can't get a straight answer. One says it's something to do with the browser and the other says it's the sites I visit but the fact is no matter what site I visit the modem sends at leaste 90% as much data as it receives and sometimes even more. I don't do uploads often. Regardless the numbers I see are not during sessions with uploading taking place.

Have anyone of you taken a peek at your connection stats? Take a look.

edit on 12/2/2011 by Mirthful Me because: All Caps Title.

What you are seeing is not normal, their can be a variety of causes. Most likely is spyware or other malicious code using your connection, this presumes of course that you are not running sharing software you have forgotten about (torrent, skype, etc).

Numerous programs will tell you what is generating that traffic, use one to find out and post. Here is info for one:

blogs.technet.com...
And no, this is not 'big brother'...

Do up some virus scans, surely if you are not downloading anything at this very moment, and your computer is always uploading to the internet wether you know it or not.

So i think your upload would climb faster, as you are not downloading anything at that particular moment, or using much of your bandwidth at all. Download something and take a snapshot.

Originally posted by LightSpeedDriver
ETA It could also be someone hitching a ride on your wi-fi. Thats also a possibility. Your modem should tell you who is connected to it via wi-fi so that should be easy enough to check.

edit on 2/12/11 by LightSpeedDriver because: ETA

It's not WiFi unless that person is sucking files off an open share since the stats in question where from the PC itself and it's a wired connection to a gigabit router (based on the speed shown)

Also, please post a screen capture of your task manager with 'show prpcesses from all users" selected. We may be able to suggest a possible culprit just from that.

Please also post a screen shot from the properties box from your network connection, I want to see the error rate.

reply to post by CherubBaby

Thanks for the screens. The first thing that jumps out at me is the LAN speed. It seems to be a non standard (mis-configured?) speed. I assume you connect via an category 5 or 6 ethernet cable to an ethernet port on the modem?. These are standard speeds: ethernet (10 megabits/s), fast ethernet (100 megabits), gigabit ethernet (1000 megabits).

Can you describe a little more about the network card in the PC (type, speed) and how you connect it to the modem? Thanks
ETA From 10 years of working in IT I've never seen a card doing the speed yours is but it could just be the equipment they use in your location. Cable modems can differ I guess

ETA2 If you have a broken NIC (network card) or cable it could be causing excessive retransmits but lets see what if the card/modem is incorrectly configured first.

Originally posted by LightSpeedDriver
reply to post by CherubBaby

 

Thanks for the screens. The first thing that jumps out at me is the LAN speed. It seems to be a non standard (mis-configured?) speed. I assume you connect via an category 5 or 6 ethernet cable to an ethernet port on the modem?. These are standard speeds: ethernet (10 megabits/s), fast ethernet (100 megabits), gigabit ethernet (1000 megabits).

425.9 Mbs shows up for USB tethered connections.

To the OP are you connected via USB to your cable or dsl modem (or are you actually tethered to a 3G modem)?

This could be TCP re-transmissions. TCP guarantees a reliable delivery mechanism. If no ACK is received then the packet is resent. You failed to mention what type of connection is in use, wired vs wireless. If its wireless there may be interference (microwave, cordless phone, metal walls, etc.) Is your network card driver current ?

What you are seeing is not an indication of a problem. To see if there is a problem use a sniffer as was previously suggested (not resetting windows counters, but actually inserting a sniffer to watch traffic).

brill

reply to post by Zaphod

Aah...thanks for explaining. I thought USB bus speed was 480 but thats close enough. I'm having a Homer moment...Doh!

reply to post by Zaphod


I am using a 4g android on this connection but this also happens when I use the 1.5 dsl both are not using wireless to connect to my pc. Both connection do the very same thing and are through 2 seperate providers

reply to post by LightSpeedDriver


I will disconnect the 4 g tether and screen shot for you the connection properties BTW I dloaded the tool for looking at activity I am not familiar with all the terms in the log and readouts but there were ongoing file creaations as I watched and read , write created etc going on then a bunch of "close file" entries and delete file after that CONSTANTLY thru the winserv ect brb