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Q: Unknown data usage early morning
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Sep 29, 2010 8:18 AMby jev1313,lightsp33d wrote:
Sounds reasonable. Of course that'll all be transparent to the user and there will be no knobs to choose "preferred behavior".
Why do you think they would not give us a "knob" to change? Apple already gives us the option(switch) to turn on or off 3G with a disclaimer about battery life. It would be very easy for them to put a switch in the Os to override cell data and force wifi. That still doesn’t mean they will actually give us a switch. Can anyone with an 3rd or 4th gen iPod look and see if they have a switch to turn on or off the "wifi while in sleep".
In fact I believe that the battery life would not even be affected very much. I think this because they have already implemented wifi in sleep mode for the iPods. correct me if im wrong but aren’t the 4th gen iPods pretty much the same hardware as the 4th gen iPhone? Can anyone with an 4thgen iPod can post how long their battery lasts with iOS 4.1? I usually get about 3 day out of my iPhone 4 before i have to charge it however i keep it on a charger at home and at work so running out of battery isnt really a concern of mine.
I forgot to mention something the moron ATT guy said to me yesterday on the phone. He said that the cause of my large data usage was most likely apps that I had downloaded that didn’t have support to send data over wifi and that it was those apps that were running up the usage. Again correct me if im wrong but aren’t the same apps that are available for the iPhone also available for the iPods. Im pretty sure that is what my iTunes says when it sorts out what apps I have. There are 2 categories. Apps that work on iPhone, iPod, iPad. And apps that work on only iPhone and iPod. iPods don’t have cellular data connections, only wifi and all of those apps work just fine on the iPod’s wifi connection. -
Sep 29, 2010 8:58 AMby Paul Conigliaro,jev1313 wrote:
It would be very easy for them to put a switch in the Os to override cell data and force wifi. That still doesn’t mean they will actually give us a switch.
Running an iPhone 4 with iOS 4.1, if I turn off Cellular Data in Settings>General>Network, Wi-Fi persists, even if not plugged into a charger. However, you lose visual voicemail. I'm not sure if this will also work on the 3GS or 3G.He said that the cause of my large data usage was most likely apps that I had downloaded that didn’t have support to send data over wifi and that it was those apps that were running up the usage.
This, as you know, is BS. I believe apps have the ability to tell what network the phone is on (3G or WiFi), but not the ability to chose 3G over WiFi if both are available, ie, if you are on WiFi, that overrides any 3G connection. That is handled by the OS. -
Sep 29, 2010 9:36 AMby lightsp33d,jev1313 wrote:
Why do you think they would not give us a "knob" to change?
Being a phone, the iPhone tries to maintain connection with a cellular tower that is in range. Maintaining this does use less energy than WiFi. But doing data transfers over 3G/cellular uses more energy than doing data transfers over WiFi. The OS (underlying network stack) will provide this transparency to apps.
Having too many knobs, especially for consumer products like this, isn't always the best thing to do. This applies not only to the iOS but to many other products as well. Also, you don't want your customers (coming from all kinds of backgrounds) calling you (or the service provider) and asking (complaining?) how come their bill is so big and that they've gone over their capped cellular data plan, etc, etc, only to be surprised about this "option" in Settings. Customers love to feel "protected" by the service providers and the makers of the consumer products. For those reasons I think that the iOS wouldn't provide a switch "Don't use WiFi when one is available when Asleep/Plugged in/Unplugged". WiFi would always be the preferred way to transfer data, since the transfer does take less energy. Also AT&T prefers it, since it offloads their cellular network.Apple already gives us the option(switch) to turn on or off 3G with a disclaimer about battery life. It would be very easy for them to put a switch in the Os to override cell data and force wifi. That still doesn’t mean they will actually give us a switch. Can anyone with an 3rd or 4th gen iPod look and see if they have a switch to turn on or off the "wifi while in sleep".
Yes, I think the OS would always prefer WiFi if one is available.
Here's a test that I'm too lazy right now to try: walk over to an area where there is no WiFi and no cellular network (50 feet away from where I'm right now the phone says "Searching..." and there is no WiFi). Send a large email (5 pics, full size). The email sits in the Outbox. Put the phone in sleep mode. Walk into WiFi and cell area coverage (where I'm right now). Watch the WiFi AP and my router for the data transfer.
I believe, although too lazy to try it (don't care too much to argue with Lawrence, it's pointless), that the outgoing data transfer would happen over WiFi, which would be good thing. -
Sep 29, 2010 9:45 AMby lightsp33d,Lawrence Finch wrote:
lightsp33d wrote:
Lawrence Finch wrote:
lightsp33d wrote:
It takes less energy to use WiFi than to send and receive data over the cellular network. This is one of the reasons why iOS always prefers WiFi when one is available and pops a modal dialog asking you to connect or simply connects if it is a known network.
But it takes MORE energy to maintain a WiFi connection when idle; WiFi requires a continuous 2-way connection between router and client; with cellular the client is in listen-only mode. This is why WiFi is off when the phone is on standby.
Why do you need to keep wifi on for outgoing connections when in standby mode? Certainly iOS can wake up the WiFi interface when an outgoing connection is to be made and shut it off when the transfer is done. This way a lot of energy is saved especially in weak cellular signal areas where WiFi is available.
Incoming connections can "ping" the phone over cellular if no active connection is present, only to have the phone "pong" via WiFi, at which point the originator can transfer (push) the data. (A well known mechanism employed by some some protocols.)
This has been discussed ad nauseum in this very thread; I don't see the point of repeating it here. The fact is the protocols don't support what you suggest, whether you think they should or not.
Should I be convinced of something here? Because I'm not. I did see some posts about WiFi and sleep mode, but I'm not convinced of whatever you're supposing here.As to charges and overcharges: Why do you think does the OS have a cellular data meter? Why do you think it was necessary to add this to the OS? Does AT&T actually count bytes transferred or does it heuristically compute the transfer size by how long a connection has been open?
AT&T records each transfer, but rounds each transfer up to the next KB. Early iPhone users saw every individual transfer on their bill, which mean bills of hundeds of pages. AT&T's "solution" was to aggregate transfers and only put the aggregate sub-totals on the bill. How they decide when to aggregate is a mystery, but it might be aggregating in the MTSO and forwarding the sum of recent data trnsfers when the phone has been idle for a period.
Are you saying that it "aggregated" to 78 MB at 2:30 am and then to 140 MB an hour and a half later at 4:00 am to a total of 218 MB while my phone was on standby on wifi at home and plugged into the charger?
I don't know all the answers.
Write that down on a Post-It and put it up on the left side of the screen.My guess is that the 4 AM aggregation is not what accumulated between 2:30 AM and 4 AM, it is what was reported by a different MTSO on its scheduled billing update at its scheduled time. So it could have been data used before 2:30 AM or after.
Why would there be more than one MTSO? Wouldn't that add some synchronization issues? All in all, what you're saying in your words, is just a "guess"?I DO know that my recorded usage on the phone matches approximately what is reported by AT&T, except that sometimes the phone reports MORE than is reported by AT&T, but that AT&T eventually catches up. So the evidence is that the phone records usage real time, but AT&T takes a while.
Unfortunately not all owners of iPhone devices (present and not in this thread) share your "I DO know" statement. They have different experiences with their billing and cellular data usage.
Why not aggregate once per day? Wouldn't that be easier? And when on cell data why do I see lots of small transfers 5-15 mins apart throughout the day? -
Sep 29, 2010 12:25 PMby chcn,lightsp33d wrote:
Lawrence Finch wrote:
I don't know all the answers.
Write that down on a Post-It and put it up on the left side of the screen.
Wow. There's no need to be nasty. I've generally found Lawrence's posts to be well-reasoned and grounded in evidence. Why would you be rude to someone who goes out of his way to contribute?My guess is that the 4 AM aggregation is not what accumulated between 2:30 AM and 4 AM, it is what was reported by a different MTSO on its scheduled billing update at its scheduled time. So it could have been data used before 2:30 AM or after.
Why would there be more than one MTSO? Wouldn't that add some synchronization issues?
A given market may have more than one MTSO: "Another entirely new MTSO may be required to serve a given market, given a substantial increase in the number of cell sites that have been constructed over a period of time. A single MTSO may not be able to handle the traffic load when many new cell sites are deployed in a given wireless market" (Paul Bedell, +Cellular/PCS Management: A Real World Perspective+, McGraw-Hill, ISBN 0071346457, at 120).
So, while we don't know if Lawrence's guess is right, it is a reasonable guess.I DO know that my recorded usage on the phone matches approximately what is reported by AT&T, except that sometimes the phone reports MORE than is reported by AT&T, but that AT&T eventually catches up. So the evidence is that the phone records usage real time, but AT&T takes a while.
Unfortunately not all owners of iPhone devices (present and not in this thread) share your "I DO know" statement. They have different experiences with their billing and cellular data usage.
Fair enough. To the extent that's really the case (and not, say, a failure to clear the phone's counter at the right time at the end of a billing cycle, or simply a mismatch caused by a delay in the reporting of usage from the MTSOs or something), then that would tend to weigh against the aggregation theory. But I think you need to track this over a few billing cycles to be sure. -
Sep 30, 2010 11:12 AMby kaluzu,how about this folks? common practice to collect data without asking the user.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20100930/tc_nf/75402 -
Sep 30, 2010 7:46 PMby dpwe,I have a few data points of my own to contribute:
- I started seeing these 2AM transfers only after I upgraded to an iPhone 4 / iOS 4 from my 3GS/3.0 phone at the start of September. At the same time, entries on my billing changed from "wap.cingular" to "Internet/MEdia net". Maybe this was part of the "baseband change" in later iOS3 releases?
- After a phantom transfer of 111MB one night, I turned off my Cellular Data for the remaining half of the month. This did indeed stop all billing activity.
- My month just rolled over, and I turned it back on. Lo and behold, middle-of-the-night billing entries again -- including one at 2:30 on the day before I turned the network back on. I think the stuff about accumulating transfers is at least partially true, and maybe they report them backwards in time, e.g. to the earliest access in a 24 hour period. Or maybe the 2AM times really are arbitrary, and do not correspond to anything happening on the phone at the reported time.
- When I got my iPhone 4, I installed Skype, then uninstalled it a couple of days later after getting woken up in the middle of the night by a persistent random caller from Australia. I was surprised that Skype was still "on" in the background, enough to field such a call. This seems like a plausible culprit for steady, continuous network use that could add up to tens or hundreds of MB over a day. The Skype desktop client is notorious for turning your machine into a routing node if your bandwidth is adequate. Can we correlate this problem with the Skype app?
DAn. -
Oct 2, 2010 10:45 AMby Jamilv,at the moment I find this **** ridiculous. I did a full restore and now have no addition apps, no email sync'd, really its a factory set phone with nothing that should be leeching data and I checked from the past 2 days, October 1st and today some random data charge has blown through my entire data plan for the month, I'm trying to get a hold of Apple and my provider to figure this **** out before I flip my **** and just go burn down an Apple and Rogers store....this is the 2nd time this has happened after contact both companies to try and fix it.
Also there is no thing about sending Apple diagnostics available to turn off when reformatting your phone....it seems Apple sets it up anyways and ***** everyone over with the data costs. -
Oct 2, 2010 10:54 AMby Eddie Strauss,Yours is maybe the most interesting and damning post yet. But don't get too excited about finding the way to turn off sending diagnostic data back to Apple. There is an easy way. But those here who have done that have seen no change. Just because you can doesn't mean you will finally lick the problem. -
Oct 2, 2010 11:40 AMby Jamilv,I finally got through all the posts and I realize it seems to be a fault on the provider and Apple if anything, but I mean a few mb per night I wouldnt really care because thats under my data plan, but I mean 500 mb in 2 nights that **** really irks me.....especially since now I have to get on the line to my provider again who may stop believing that the data isnt my fault considering this it the 3rd time I have had to call them. Its just ridiculous....
EDIT: iAds was already opted out of
<Edited by Host> -
Oct 2, 2010 11:06 AMby Lawrence Finch,I've been quite intrigued by the claim that turning off diagnostic data reduces network data transfer, because according to Apple the diagnostic data get transmitted over the cable when you sync, not over the air. What goes over the air is iAds data, which you can opt out of. -
Oct 2, 2010 7:05 PMby chcn,Jamilv wrote:
... I checked from the past 2 days, October 1st and today some random data charge has blown through my entire data plan for the month, ... Apple and Rogers store....this is the 2nd time this has happened after contact both companies to try and fix it.
Interesting. Rogers, you say? This is the first I've heard of anyone in Canada having this problem.
Our family has had a couple of iPhones on Rogers for quite a while now, each on a 500MB plan, and we've never had this problem, nor have we ever had a significant discrepancy between the phone's data counter and the bill.
