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cnpeyton Author

Level 1

2 points

Unknown data usage early morning

With the changes to the data plans, i decided to look at my wifes data usage on her iphone. What i have found is odd and a bit concerning. Overall her data usage is pretty much nothing, except for something that occurs every morning around 1 or 2 am. I have included data usage on the AT&T account below. As you can see, something happens around 1 or 2 am every morning, i just dont know what it is. The amount of data being transferred is REALLY high if you ask me, as high as 75336KB back on the 17th. I called AT&T support and they said it was the phone updating or mail being downloaded, basically they have no idea. I have the mail set to fetch manually already. Anyway to determine what is going on???

06/04 01:22 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 3368KB
06/03 01:45 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 18906KB
06/02 01:45 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 6878KB
06/01 01:45 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 9460KB
05/31 07:45 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1918KB
05/31 01:27 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 7551KB
05/30 02:27 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1224KB
05/30 01:17 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 2685KB
05/29 01:39 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 8120KB
05/28 01:39 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 5410KB
05/28 01:07 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 5068KB
05/27 10:42 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 21778KB
05/27 01:06 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 10419KB
05/26 09:26 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 20657KB
05/26 01:50 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 8467KB
05/25 02:21 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 18086KB
05/25 01:25 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 5249KB
05/24 01:25 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1012KB
05/23 01:25 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 12978KB
05/22 01:25 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 9749KB
05/21 01:41 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 19166KB
05/20 01:17 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 23860KB
05/18 11:56 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 15440KB
05/18 01:06 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 29900KB
05/17 01:12 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 75336KB

Posted on Jun 5, 2010 4:56 AM

Top-ranking reply

choroid

Level 1

4 points

Posted on Sep 5, 2011 4:43 AM

this is from data manager application between 7am and 8am, I was at bath had breakfast and drive. look at the data downloads both from 3g and wifi. It can be some application but after 8 am ıt just stops without any intervention. Any ideas ? (iphone 4)

View in context

2,094 replies

cnpeyton Author

Level 1

2 points

Jun 24, 2010 9:25 PM in response to baderr

I love the ridiculous responses from the customer service people. Turn your phone off, its updating at night, apple is collecting stats. The first lady even asked me, "are you sure you aren't up at night surfing the net?" Would it be that hard to just say, i dont know...

I find it humorous that AT&T want's to be in the business of charging you for usage, yet they cannot tell you how to track usage, troubleshoot usage, no tools to tell where data is coming or going, basically nothing. I'm using your phone on your network and customer service basically says, were helpless, try turning your phone off.

love it!!!

brad162

Level 1

0 points

Jun 25, 2010 2:28 AM in response to Gerald Edgar

well i have to start all over, (gf got ahold of iphone and turned on WiFi, so not a fair test)

i will start in the AM with no data WiFi, Push, etc and see how my data does over a 24hr period then i'll post my log from My T-Mobile so we can compare results

Daegon

Level 1

0 points

Jun 25, 2010 7:09 AM in response to brad162

Guys I suggest sending this link to reputable tech blogs as well, to shed some light on this and get others investigating and asking questions. I'm not a Apple hater, I want this phone really bad, but with all the unanswered questions from ATT, it makes me wait.

I also find it funny that ATT reps ask people to "turn off" the phone. What the h*ll is the d*mn point of having a phone if you need to keep it turned off? One thing stands for sure and that is ATT customer service s*cks, no denying that.

Jun 25, 2010 8:39 AM in response to Lawrence Finch

I am experiencing this too. I just talked to ATT&T and they are opening a case. I emailed them the link to this discussion and told the rep that the problem was obviously bigger then me and her. I said "just do a google search..."

Anyhoo, I wanted my account noted because this is some crazy, unforseen side effect of limiting data. I don't want to pay for ATT&T not being able to anticipate this problem. ATT&T noted my account and that I wasn't going to pay for data I did not use.

I suggest everybody do the same, ATT&T will get the picture.

The problem is consistent and in a pattern so they can't deny it.

This is definitely ATT&T's responsibility to figure out.

Zoomster

Level 1

4 points

Jun 26, 2010 6:53 AM in response to cnpeyton

I admit that I haven't read all 11 pages, but it seems that this is still an open questions.

Saw this article referenced by a similar thread on ARS:

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/18/another-iphone-mystery-explained/

Bottom line, FTA: “What your readers are seeing is a routine update of the daily data activity on their devices — whether the iPhone or other handsets — to ensure billing accuracy. Customers are not charged for any data usage as part of this routine update.”

brad162

Level 1

0 points

Jun 27, 2010 9:40 AM in response to cnpeyton

Ok so after two days of collective updating without push notifications, mobile me, etc.. this is what i found on T-Mobile. It's still checking in for some things overnight, but my daytime usage is showing accordingly. So it may be a glitch in at&t's system, now i'll try the test again over the next two days with push and everything on and we'll see what happens overnight.

"DATA SERVICE CHARGES"

Date,Time,Megabytes
"06/27/10","06:22 AM","0.2119"
"06/27/10","04:22 AM","0.1816"
"06/27/10","02:22 AM","0.1806"
"06/27/10","12:22 AM","3.0107"
"06/26/10","10:22 PM","2.2177"
"06/26/10","10:05 PM","0.0371"
"06/26/10","09:48 PM","0.0195"
"06/26/10","09:28 PM","3.1123"
"06/26/10","07:35 PM","0.288"
"06/26/10","05:35 PM","3.125"
"06/26/10","03:35 PM","0.2724"
"06/26/10","02:42 PM","0.3583"
"06/26/10","01:40 PM","0.206"
"06/26/10","12:49 PM","0.0703"
"06/26/10","11:25 AM","0.1425"
"06/26/10","10:56 AM","0.0644"
"06/26/10","09:18 AM","0.5869"
"06/26/10","07:37 AM","0.5341"
"06/26/10","06:41 AM","0.3906"
"06/26/10","05:59 AM","0.4687"
"06/26/10","03:59 AM","1.624"
"06/26/10","01:59 AM","1.5341"
"06/26/10","01:30 AM","0.1484"
"06/26/10","01:21 AM","0.0439"
"06/26/10","01:11 AM","0.0957"
"06/26/10","12:51 AM","0.4824"
"06/26/10","12:02 AM","0.121"
"06/25/10","10:14 PM","12.6748"
"06/25/10","08:33 PM","29.2558"
"06/25/10","08:14 PM","2.6455"
"06/25/10","07:40 PM","0.0117"
"06/25/10","07:15 PM","0.0546"
"06/25/10","06:23 PM","0.2119"
"06/25/10","05:48 PM","0.1542"
"06/25/10","05:17 PM","0.1757"
"06/25/10","04:53 PM","0.1455"
"06/25/10","03:31 PM","0.3095"
"06/25/10","02:22 PM","0.1796"
"06/25/10","01:51 PM","0.3339"
"06/25/10","11:58 AM","1.1035"
"06/25/10","11:36 AM","0.289"
"06/25/10","10:26 AM","0.1728"
"06/25/10","09:45 AM","0.1113"
"06/25/10","09:18 AM","0.0322"
"06/25/10","08:52 AM","0.0654"
"06/25/10","08:12 AM","0.0839"
"06/25/10","06:23 AM","0.2001"
"06/25/10","04:32 AM","0.2548"
"06/25/10","04:05 AM","1.1162"
"06/25/10","02:50 AM","2.373"
"06/25/10","02:17 AM","2.9628"
"06/25/10","01:56 AM","0.2109"
"TOTAL MEGABYTES",,"74.6567"
"The date and time for all data corresponds to Pacific Time (PST/PDT)."

Jun 28, 2010 12:34 AM in response to Jeff Hallgren

Just to let you know my wife's phone in Australia using Telstra is also exhibiting large data usage in the night. Push is off and no Safari windows open. Yesterday the phone managed to use 150MB without any usage from its owner!

Jun 28, 2010 1:40 PM in response to cnpeyton

First up: Sorry about my English, but I'm swiss....
A few days ago I received the monthly Bill by my swiss provider(sunrise) My mobile data exploded from an average of 100-200Mb/Month(Dec.2008 to April 2010) to around 1.3 GB im May 2010. There were data transfers when I was asleep, at work(yep, WiFi there) and at home (WiFi as well). What's odd is the fact that 2/3 of all data beeing sent/received happened between 06.00 and 12.00. That would be between Midnight and 6AM in the US.(New York time, "EST" right?)
I was really upset by my service provider, getting no support what so ever. All they said was that their data shows that my iPhone went online and all data was charged properly...
Now, after reading (almost :-)) every response to this post I honestly think it's not the Mobile provider. It must be the OS of the iPhone or an App... ......It's just strange....

Jun 28, 2010 1:49 PM in response to cnpeyton

Ok, so my iPhone 3GS was sold, and I'm now using an iPhone 4.

The mysterious Data usage transactions have ceased. Whatever the iPhone was doing over the Cell network it is now no longer doing or it is doing it over WiFi.

Also, after checking my Bill for last month, even though the online site shows these mysterious outgoing data usage events, as best I could tell, we are not being charged for them.

Kenny

Pup

Level 2

310 points

Jun 28, 2010 3:51 PM in response to Lawrence Finch

Well since updating to my iPhone 4 using 4.0 I went under the Network settings turned off the 3G and cell data at night and no data being transferred. When I turn it on during the day the activity starts up again. When both are off I can still make/receive calls.

Jun 29, 2010 4:03 PM in response to Pup

Thinking about my earlier report that there was a 150MB use, this shows up on the total usage but the day to day split seems to have stopped on 26th with no reports since.

The only logical download of that magnitude would have to be the iPhone OS upgrade.

But this was done with both the phone and the computer on our home wifi network. How come it shows on the phone data usage unless somehow the iPhone is tethering and has taken over from the wifi?? Tethering is off for this phone.

Anyway I've now put the sim card in an unlocked 3G to see if the large inexplicable downloads continue or if they are caused by the 3GS phone.

CyBeRino

Level 1

70 points

Jun 29, 2010 5:28 PM in response to cnpeyton

Wow, so much lack of clue in this topic.

First, let me spell this out simply for you all:

*Your phone IS NOT TRANSMITTING A BULK OF DATA DURING THE NIGHT.* Especially not tens of megabytes-worth. Obviously if you have fetch mail set, it'll do that every X minutes and it'll keep a connection open for push and such as well, but nothing bulky. Apart from all this, transmitting 300MB (as I've seen someone mention) over 3G takes several hours.

What you are seeing is AT&T (or whatever other carrier) billing you for a daily session. If you have push enabled, your phone keeps open a connection to your carrier's data network +all the time+.

Carriers normally bill data usage per session. So whenever your phone opens the connection, transmits some data (let's say 100KB), and closes the connection, the carrier will bill you for 100KB. But if you have push enabled, it never closes the connection unless it actually loses the connection to the cell network. This would happen if you turn off the phone/run out of battery (obviously), turn on airplane more, go somewhere without wireless coverage, etc.

As mentioned in this thread, people who've been taking flights (and thus turned off their phones) have seen billing lines corresponding roughly to the times they were up in the air. As I said, with push enabled, the phone usually keeps its connection up forever, so there's no session ending to bill at. So the carrier picks a time to bill the session. I suspect this might involves closing said connection, so they do this at 2 AM so it disturbs as little as possible. If that is the case (I can not say for sure) and you were to keep track of the phone's IP address, you would probably see it change right at the time mentioned in the billing line.

My carrier, Vodafone, also bills me per session. They just happen to be exact about billing open sessions (whereas AT&T is a bit more sloppy). They are billed at midnight exactly. Here's a picture of one of the pages of the data part of my phone bill. It's in dutch but should speak for itself: http://www.cyberhq.nl/~marco/vodafone.png (Don't ask about the third column-- I have no clue myself and no one else appears to know either.) A good example is the 4th of May. You can see the first line on that date being at midnight exactly-- this is the previous day's usage for the session still open at that point in time. Then at 15:30-ish, another charge appears. Apparently my phone lost the connection or was restarted at that point. Then at midnight exactly (billed on the 5th of May), I'm charged for a second time. I use my phone multiple times every day, and my phone checks e-mail every 30 minutes using fetch. Notice a lack of billing every 30 minutes. This is because I do have push enabled for other things, so the connection is left open.

As for 3G usage while wi-fi is available-- the phone must keep open connections to certain services. Notably push services. These continue to use the cell network even if wifi is available. Anything else at that point, however (music streaming, app downloading, web browsing) does use wifi.

I hope this issue can be put to rest-- nothing nefarious is going on.

By the way Cirrus330 right above me: iPhoneOS updates are around 250MB. Your 150MB is just you using the internet.

brad162

Level 1

0 points

Jun 30, 2010 4:17 AM in response to CyBeRino

ok so with does My T-Mobile and the iPhone say different data usage is my question?

This makes absolutely no sense at all. I know T-Mobile's billing is just fine, so what's up with the random data sessions even now that i have auto-fetch/push notifications off?

T-Mobile's log:

"DATA SERVICE CHARGES"

Date,Time,Megabytes
"06/30/10","01:44 AM","9.4062"
"06/30/10","12:02 AM","0.4609"
"06/29/10","11:57 PM","2.8876"
"06/29/10","11:14 PM","0.1416"
"06/29/10","09:30 PM","2.4238"
"06/29/10","07:30 PM","0.2412"
"06/29/10","05:30 PM","0.1816"
"06/29/10","03:30 PM","0.5351"
"06/29/10","01:30 PM","0.3154"
"06/29/10","01:17 PM","0.0585"
"06/29/10","11:52 AM","0.3281"
"06/29/10","11:36 AM","0.0556"
"06/29/10","11:00 AM","0.1933"
"06/29/10","10:40 AM","0.041"
"06/29/10","10:14 AM","0.0986"
"06/29/10","09:43 AM","0.0302"
"06/29/10","08:13 AM","0.1757"
"06/29/10","07:10 AM","0.1689"
"06/29/10","06:51 AM","0.0322"
"06/29/10","06:22 AM","0.0576"
"06/29/10","05:48 AM","0.0361"
"06/29/10","04:08 AM","0.1591"
"06/29/10","02:25 AM","0.1699"
"06/29/10","12:25 AM","0.1425"
"06/29/10","12:05 AM","0.038"
"06/28/10","10:55 PM","0.0761"
"06/28/10","08:55 PM","0.3984"
"06/28/10","07:22 PM","0.1621"
"06/28/10","05:22 PM","0.3007"
"06/28/10","03:22 PM","0.2089"
"06/28/10","01:22 PM","3.0136"
"06/28/10","12:28 PM","0.2568"
"06/28/10","10:30 AM","2.2656"
"06/28/10","08:30 AM","0.1923"
"06/28/10","07:44 AM","0.1142"
"06/28/10","05:44 AM","0.2597"
"06/28/10","03:44 AM","1.8789"
"06/28/10","03:30 AM","1.4199"
"06/28/10","01:30 AM","0.2705"
"06/27/10","11:30 PM","0.4472"
"06/27/10","11:03 PM","0.0976"
"06/27/10","10:29 PM","0.3173"
"06/27/10","09:53 PM","0.1621"
"06/27/10","09:06 PM","0.1113"
"06/27/10","07:06 PM","0.2197"
"06/27/10","06:42 PM","0.4843"
"06/27/10","05:53 PM","0.541"
"06/27/10","05:16 PM","0.0478"
"06/27/10","04:16 PM","0.1406"
"06/27/10","03:32 PM","0.0527"
"06/27/10","02:43 PM","0.0566"
"06/27/10","02:23 PM","0.0292"
"06/27/10","01:54 PM","0.0927"
"06/27/10","12:03 PM","1.4248"
"06/27/10","11:53 AM","0.0117"
"06/27/10","11:23 AM","0.0488"
"06/27/10","11:05 AM","0.0537"
"06/27/10","10:53 AM","0.0126"
"06/27/10","10:15 AM","0.9951"
"06/27/10","09:47 AM","0.0361"
"06/27/10","08:22 AM","0.7363"
"06/27/10","06:22 AM","0.2119"
"06/27/10","04:22 AM","0.1816"
"06/27/10","02:22 AM","0.1806"
"06/27/10","12:22 AM","3.0107"
"06/26/10","10:22 PM","2.2177"
"06/26/10","10:05 PM","0.0371"
"06/26/10","09:48 PM","0.0195"
"06/26/10","09:28 PM","3.1123"
"06/26/10","07:35 PM","0.288"
"06/26/10","05:35 PM","3.125"
"06/26/10","03:35 PM","0.2724"
"06/26/10","02:42 PM","0.3583"
"06/26/10","01:40 PM","0.206"
"06/26/10","12:49 PM","0.0703"
"06/26/10","11:25 AM","0.1425"
"06/26/10","10:56 AM","0.0644"
"06/26/10","09:18 AM","0.5869"
"06/26/10","07:37 AM","0.5341"
"06/26/10","06:41 AM","0.3906"
"06/26/10","05:59 AM","0.4687"
"06/26/10","03:59 AM","1.624"
"06/26/10","01:59 AM","1.5341"
"06/26/10","01:30 AM","0.1484"
"06/26/10","01:21 AM","0.0439"
"06/26/10","01:11 AM","0.0957"
"06/26/10","12:51 AM","0.4824"
"06/26/10","12:02 AM","0.121"
"06/25/10","10:14 PM","12.6748"
"06/25/10","08:33 PM","29.2558"
"06/25/10","08:14 PM","2.6455"
"06/25/10","07:40 PM","0.0117"
"06/25/10","07:15 PM","0.0546"
"06/25/10","06:23 PM","0.2119"
"06/25/10","05:48 PM","0.1542"
"06/25/10","05:17 PM","0.1757"
"06/25/10","04:53 PM","0.1455"
"06/25/10","03:31 PM","0.3095"
"06/25/10","02:22 PM","0.1796"
"06/25/10","01:51 PM","0.3339"
"06/25/10","11:58 AM","1.1035"
"06/25/10","11:36 AM","0.289"
"06/25/10","10:26 AM","0.1728"
"06/25/10","09:45 AM","0.1113"
"06/25/10","09:18 AM","0.0322"
"06/25/10","08:52 AM","0.0654"
"06/25/10","08:12 AM","0.0839"
"06/25/10","06:23 AM","0.2001"
"06/25/10","04:32 AM","0.2548"
"06/25/10","04:05 AM","1.1162"
"06/25/10","02:50 AM","2.373"
"06/25/10","02:17 AM","2.9628"
"06/25/10","01:56 AM","0.2109"
"TOTAL MEGABYTES",,"109.9723"
"The date and time for all data corresponds to Pacific Time (PST/PDT)."

iPhone's detailed usage:

http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/6962/datab.jpg

Ooh and i just woke up from sleeping from ~10:30pm-3:45am and it's showing data at 1am for 9mb? i know i was not online then to be doing anything.

Message was edited by: brad162

Jun 30, 2010 9:20 AM in response to KennyGardner

I get that the 2AM time is an auditing check-in of sorts -- but she was suddenly doing ~20MB/day in mid-June after being a ~70MB/mo user on average for as far as the AT&T website could go back.

After iOS4, it went back to ~2MB daily. It's unfortunate that it doesn't sound like this wasn't a fix for everyone with this problem. 😟

CyBeRino

Level 1

70 points

Jun 30, 2010 10:37 AM in response to brad162

brad162 wrote:
ok so with does My T-Mobile and the iPhone say different data usage is my question?

This makes absolutely no sense at all. I know T-Mobile's billing is just fine, so what's up with the random data sessions even now that i have auto-fetch/push notifications off?

There is another little trick carriers pull, which is that they charge a minimum amount of data per session, even if you've actually transferred less. Another option is they charge in increments of X kilobytes. So let's say again you have your phone disconnected, you it wants to fetch mail so it connects, asks for new mail, finds out there isn't any, and disconnects. This exchange takes a few hundred bytes to maybe a kilobyte or two, depending on circumstances. But the carrier will happily bill this at some much higher (carrier-specific, I can't say how much it would be) amount. Keeping push enabled actually helps with this: it keeps one long session open, so the 'overhead' is suddenly none (if there is a minimum) or minimal (if they charge in increments of X kilobytes).

Unknown data usage early morning