Increased internet usage when using wireless

[-KarumA-]

Hey ho~

I live in a shared house with other students, most of us have a desktop some of us do not.
We however had a problem that at first occurred with one person we had in this house, and I'll first get into that. This guy who is a foreign student and never really communicates with anyone was using our network through wireless on his laptop. But whenever he was online the speed of the entire house would collapse and eventually the router would even needed to be reseted in order to get some form of connection.

We asked him if he was downloading many times, he was most of the times or hardly said anything. This started happening ever since he moved in and we had this problem for about a year.

So now a couple months back we got a new router and with this one we finally managed to be able to see how much of the internet we have is being used by each person. I'll quote from the graph;

The current connection numbers built by each LAN client are displayed in the following table. A higher number of open sessions that a LAN client creates means busier internet activities he or she is engaging in

It would then list our computer names, followed by IP and MAC addresses and number of open sessions. We found out that this guy was always peaking a lot above the rest; if I was downloading lets say 2 torrents I would end up around 400-800 and he would always be around 1600 no matter what. Since we had so many disconnections through out the year the owner of the service asked our provider who told us there was a lot of download activity going on and so our connection is always overloaded because too many are made at the same time all the time.

So we eventually banned the guy from wireless for a weekend because we were all sick of it (one of us likes to play Settlers but without proper internet you can't even start the game). We changed the wireless password and gave him the new one after he started asking about it but he hasn't been online since.

Now however we had this occurring, the guy living next to me has a mini laptop from Asus and also runs Windows 7 on it. Normally he doesn't use the internet on it but decided to connect to wireless (usually he uses his desktop). Again the connection topped to 1600 in the graph and the rest of the house was slow to connect. I found it odd because he wasn't running any browsers, torrents or anything; just the desktop and I didn't see anything odd in his taskmanager either. So I started thinking what if downloading doesn't cause this, but then I am stuck on what might cause it. There are 3 computers able to connect to wireless; the foreign student's laptop, the Asus mini laptop and a Macbook but the Macbook never had a high usage and never caused problems. There are also 2 Ipads in use sometimes on the same wireless that do not cause problems. The rest connects with your good old typical internet cable and we never had problems either.

So yeh, I still want to see if it also happens if my housemate uses the cable in his mini Asus laptop, but for now I am in the blind and I was wondering if anyone here could shed a light on this weird situation. And before people start recommending new routers etc. I am not asking this because of internet drop outs, I am asking this because I find it peculiar that when a windows laptop connects on wireless it uses so much of our connection while other devices such as the Macbook use so little like it should.


We're going to run some tests with the Qos function to limit the bandwidth usage for wireless to try and prevent this problem from happening.
I however have one question about it; to how much should I limit it?

Here's a screenie;



I added a sessions table that I had saved, my computer sticks to around 300 and maybe hits 800 when downloading multiple torrents and surfing online (with one it stick to max 500).
The 1600+ is from the foreign student's laptop.
But I have no idea what measurement the numbers stand for and so how much I should add in for the QoS.

edit;
Okay I would like some light shed on QoS as well, a roommate said he had tried that function before but it doesn't work in changing the situation. Something about it being for lan and not wireless. I actually remember him using it, it would lower my download speed but not the foreign student's laptop would still peak like always.

[blaze0041]

Incidentally, what version of Mac OS X are the Macbooks running? (e.g. 10.7 Lion?)
It sounds doubtful that the foreign student's laptop has any malware on it (or the mini Asus). It also seems doubtful that either laptop have any programs that may limit the bandwidth of other computers on the network.
Both were running Windows 7, yes? If so, you might want to ask them about their HomeGroup settings. You may also like to check their network settings (Network and Sharing Center), under "active networks"- check to see if any of them say "Home network".

[sa547]

I wonder if some of these clients have automatic updates activated without them realizing what was going on; some programs, such as Chrome, Java and others, have the updater loaded in memory.

[sneaker]

Originally Posted by blaze0041

It sounds doubtful that the foreign student's laptop has any malware on it (or the mini Asus).

It can't hurt to test with some live AV system. Malware used for spam and ddos isn't unheard of, even if it may seem doubtful in this case. Though my first search would've been for a torrent client, especially with uTP enabled, but he ruled that out already.

I would've also advised to update the firmware and disable the inbuilt spi firewall and QoS, as Windows 7 has been known to make trouble due to changed networking techniques, but I guess with such a recently bought router that should not be the cause.

What happens if you only connect the Asus, i.e. disconnect all other computers?

Originally Posted by blaze0041

It also seems doubtful that either laptop have any programs that may limit the bandwidth of other computers on the network.
Both were running Windows 7, yes? If so, you might want to ask them about their HomeGroup settings. You may also like to check their network settings (Network and Sharing Center), under "active networks"- check to see if any of them say "Home network".

In Windows 7 it's fairly easy to shut down all that private network stuff by enabling the windows firewall and switching it to "public mode" (park bench symbol) for the wireless connection.

tl;dr:
I have no idea, but keep me updated, the problem sounds interesting

[-KarumA-]

If only the laptop is connected then it will still top the charts. As far as I know there aren't any background apps running, I booted up his mini laptop, checked if any updating programs were running but non of which there were should cause this kind of problem.

I'll have my friend do a malware scan on his laptop, but still find it odd since us wired people are on the same network and do not have this virus.

Might I however ask what I should look for with this Homenetwork setting? Since I have my pc set to that as well, are there different ones with different privledges (I never owned a laptop)?

[blaze0041]

Originally Posted by -KarumA-

Might I however ask what I should look for with this Homenetwork setting? Since I have my pc set to that as well, are there different ones with different privledges (I never owned a laptop)?

Control Panel -> Network and Sharing Center - "View your active networks"

This is more or less a stab in the dark, but if it does say "Home network", it could perhaps mean that Windows may be searching for other computers on the network, whilst broadcasting itself as well (Network Discovery).
If it were "Public network", then Network Discovery is turned off.
It's highly unlikely this would be the root cause of the unexpectedly high bandwidth usage of the router, however.

You may want to check their Windows Update settings.

[-KarumA-]

Originally Posted by blaze0041

Control Panel -> Network and Sharing Center - "View your active networks"

This is more or less a stab in the dark, but if it does say "Home network", it could perhaps mean that Windows may be searching for other computers on the network, whilst broadcasting itself as well (Network Discovery).
If it were "Public network", then Network Discovery is turned off.
It's highly unlikely this would be the root cause of the unexpectedly high bandwidth usage of the router, however.

You may want to check their Windows Update settings.

Alright, see if it is set to Public I'll check when my roomie comes home as well as the windows update settings. Thank you very much.

[-KarumA-]

I think the public setting did the trick. A new thing came up int he past few days which was that the person we saw on the list the entire time using up all our internet was in fact that foreigner's friend who was coming over every day and not him. He has been online now but no problems whatsoever, seemingly that little twit was rude enough to continuously download on our network while being a guest and midwhile doing other things together with the foreigner which annoyed pretty much all of us. He hasn't shown himself at all ever since because I kicked him off the internet all together through mac filter and so far our foreign "friend" has been taking his annoying habits over to his place. So for now problem solved, since the Asus mini was never really going to be used for wireless.

[sa547]

Finally you got the freeloader. Looks like I'll keep this one as a reference should I see someone eats up bandwidth without explanation.

[Proto]

Those evil, 3v1l foreigners.

Some routers come with the option of establishing priorities or doing some QoS tweaking. Well, I guess that now the problem is solved.

[Jinto]

If the Asus mini was operating in the wireless ad hoc mode, it might actually allow other devices to leach from its connection to the ISP. It would basically work like a Repeater or HotSpot then.

I know its rather unlikely, but you might want to check it. It would still require some sort of Gateway... but who knows what Windows 7 is doing under the hood