WiMax Users: My monthly 10 GB Entitlement Runs Dry Quick … I Did Not Even Consume that Much!

مستخدمين الواى ماكس: لماذا يتم إستهلاك حصتى الشهرية بسرعة رغم أننى لم أُحمّل بهذا القدر؟, للغة العربية أنقر هنا 

Do you wonder why your WiMax monthly 10 gigabytes entitlement is consumed quickly and oftenly within the first 10 days although you did not download that much yourself?. It happened to me, and when I logged in to my modem interface I found out that, the total download rate through the modem is approximately 1 MB per minute even though my PC is idle, which makes up ~ 1.5 gigabytes per 24 hrs! … there goes my monthly entitlement in the first 10 days.

If you are experiencing the same thing, then you should know that the cause is your computer!, or one (or all ) of the computers connected though your home of office LAN (if you have any), malwares and viruses as well as certain programs connect to the internet and start downloading stuff left and right at a crazy rate because WiMax is a broadband connection. Sometimes Windows itself feels comfortable downloading automatically massive updates .. etc, which you could be ok with if you had known in advance.

Here are several key measures that  you can do to better manage this and ensure that you do not run out of gigabytes before the end of the month:

1. 
   
   Turn off your modem or disconnect from WiMax when any of the computers are not in use, if you have Dream Box in your network then ensure that all computers are disconnected instead.
2. 
   
   Scan all computers against viruses and malware.
3. 
   
   Turn off automatic updates for applications (except for your antivirus).
4. 
   
   Execute the 7 steps mentioned in my earlier post: Improve Your PC Performance in 7 steps: S.P.E.E.D.U.P. Most of these steps helps a lot in cleaning your operating system.
5. 
   
   One of the very powerful tools I found over the internet is NetLimiter Pro 2, it is very reliable in monitoring and controlling traffic between your computer and the internet, you can set download/upload transfer rate limits for applications or even single connection and monitor their internet traffic. It acts as a firewall and it offers you a set of actions to find which vampire program is sucking the blood from your monthly entitlement and then kill it. Click here to find out more.
   
6. 
   
   Enable Windows firewall, it helps a lot in blocking unwanted connections.

Following the above, I have managed to reduce the total download rate (when idle) to 0.07 megabyte per minute which is very reasonable.