My internet usage meter doesn't jive with ISP

[hagbard]

Been trying to understand this for nearly a year. When I check my internet usage on my Tomato router, it will say something like 13.26GB, when I check the usage on my ISP's site, it says I've used 15gb. Why do they claim I've used so much more? Its this way just about every day, my daily usage is well below what they say it is. They've tried to explain it to me but its never made sense.

BTW, I've tried four different routers (two Tomato, two others), none give me the same results as my ISP. Occasionally, mine shows more usage then theirs but very rarely. I'd think they're meter is running 'fast' yet no one else seems to have this issue.

 

[stevech]

upstream included in both?
One uses kilo (1000) bytes and the other uses computer KB (1024) bytes?

 

[hagbard]

upstream included in both?
One uses kilo (1000) bytes and the other uses computer KB (1024) bytes?

They say they don't include the upstream, but if so, then they are really off. Mine is the total (up and down). Let me give you a current example:

Mine is 13.28 GB or when switched to MB is 13,593.72 MB total (up and down), they say its 15gb just down.

 

[stevech]

They say they don't include the upstream, but if so, then they are really off. Mine is the total (up and down). Let me give you a current example:

Mine is 13.28 GB or when switched to MB is 13,593.72 MB total (up and down), they say its 15gb just down.

did you do the math on KB/MB/GB using 1,000 vs. 1024?

 

[hagbard]

did you do the math on KB/MB/GB using 1,000 vs. 1024?

Math isn't my strong point...how do I do that? I tried multiplying by 1024 and I didn't come anywhere near 15gb.

 

[Dreamslacker]

Math isn't my strong point...how do I do that? I tried multiplying by 1024 and I didn't come anywhere near 15gb.

For networking, we generally count in KB/ MB/ GB rather than KiB/ MiB/ GiB.

The difference is:
1 KB = 1000B
1KiB = 1024B

1MB = 1000KiB
1MiB = 1024KB

And so on..

So if Tomato counts in MiB rather than MB (it's usually vague but your ISP will definitely be counting in MB), then your traffic of 13,593.72 MiB is actually 14254048542.72B.
Your ISP will see this as ~14.25GB.

Now, the issue more of whether Tomato counts dropped packets towards your graph.
Say if you started a download for a large file and subsequently kill it - the server may still be sending the remainder of the packets over but your router is dropping them because the connection is no longer active.
As far as your ISP is concerned, this is traffic heading down your link but Tomato may not be charting this because it's not passing through the router.

Edit:

One more thing, is your ISP reporting the bandwidth in Bits or Bytes? Bits is generally denoted with a small 'b' and Bytes as big 'B'. 1'B' = 8'b'.
I doubt the difference is that drastic (8 fold) but it might help to check.

 

[hagbard]

Okay, thanks, that could explain it. Don't know why I'd be different than everyone else using that ISP though? Other customers comment on how accurate their metering is. As for the numbers I gave yesterday, when I saw we were at around 12gb, I went to my son and asked what he was downloading. At first he said a tiny 20mb file, but I could see that Steam was actively doing a large download. Told him to stop it, and he did, so I can see where it might still be sending through the IP but Tomato has already stopped seeing it. (If I understood you correctly).

 

[Dreamslacker]

Okay, thanks, that could explain it. Don't know why I'd be different than everyone else using that ISP though? Other customers comment on how accurate their metering is. As for the numbers I gave yesterday, when I saw we were at around 12gb, I went to my son and asked what he was downloading. At first he said a tiny 20mb file, but I could see that Steam was actively doing a large download. Told him to stop it, and he did, so I can see where it might still be sending through the IP but Tomato has already stopped seeing it. (If I understood you correctly).

Put very simply, that could be the case. There are definitely other factors at play here. Dropped packets shouldn't account for a very large difference (at least, not within a matter of hours). Most of the 'lost' or dropped chunks are small but it might add up substantially especially for UDP traffic (torrent, P2P).
Some game publishing platforms like Blizzard, Steam and Origin use P2P to distribute. Dropping packets from large number of peers by terminating downloads could account for a fair bit of packets that are unaccounted for by your router though it's more likely with Torrents using UDP and banned peers/ corrupted hashes.

 

[hagbard]

This is weird! Today the meter is 100% the same if including downloads only. Mine says 3.7gb, theirs says 3.7gb.

 

[hagbard]

Now their's is saying 0.8g and mine 1.56gb.