<div class="gmail_quote">On 1 February 2010 11:47, Bill Cairns <<a href="mailto:cairnsww@gmail.com">cairnsww@gmail.com</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;"> Hi Everyone, I have a 3 Gig contract with Telkom which should surely be enough for the internet stuff that I do. But I regularly exceed that cap. Something is obviously chowing my bandwidth while I am not watching. It could be something on my 08.04 Ubuntu box, but of course it is just as likely to be one of the two XP machines or the one Vista machine that is the culprit. Of the Windows machines, only the Vista machine runs regularly, the XP machines are notebooks which are used far less often. But, starting at the beginning, is there a program that I can run on by 08.04 Ubuntu machine that I can use to see if there is anything behind the scenes who is downloading things while I am not watching? Searching for "Monitor network traffic" on synaptic gives quite a few candidates (perhaps MRTG looks the most promising but also looks the most complicated). Advice? Also (off into a dreadful topic I know) any advice on what I could use on XP and Vista? Lastly, any suggestions about who can be stealing all that bandwidth? (My wireless connection is enabled but password protected. I live in a retirement centre and doubt anyone here has hacked into my router but I suppose it is possible!) Bill -- ubuntu-za mailing list <a href="mailto:ubuntu-za@lists.ubuntu.com">ubuntu-za@lists.ubuntu.com</a> <a href="https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-za" target="_blank">https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-za</a> </blockquote></div> Hi Bill. Automatic updates on Windows XP and Vista are known bandwidth thieves. These apps alone can rip a 3Gb cap apart in days, especially all those "security" updates. Tie into that Java Updater, Office Updater, Symantec LiveUpdate, HP Software Updates and you can run through your cap in a flash. Check for the obvious culprits first - I'd start with Windows Updates and then the rest. I haven't seen my Linux box misbehave yet, but then again, I manually do updates. Best regards Ewald