If you run Windows 10, maybe make sure peer-to-peer Windows Update is disabled (although I have no idea how much data this can upload in practice).

Get in touch via your portal or phone - we can go through the usage with you.

To give you a rough idea, usually your monthly upload* usage is in the area of 0.65GB. This month has been more than double at 1.76GB so far.

Whilst you may be running speedtests - we're seeing 3-4 hour long periods of higher latency due to increased uploads so I doubt you're running them consistently for that long.

Matt

Edited by uno (Wed 31-May-17 13:14:21)

JohnR

PC is wired.
Laptop is wireless ... but I've tried a wired connection straight to the router and get the same problems.

Other devices
- Android smart phone (MotoG) and tablet (HUDL2). Both set to auto backup photos. But I take very few and have not in fact taken a photo on either for a couple of weeks now.
- Kindle, Youview, Sky and Amazon instant video are all connected. But I would not think these are likely to upload anything.

At the moment... I'm wondering if it could be my sisters laptop (Lenovo ideapad, only a month or so old). Especially as this problem seems to have started when she came home on Monday and it's this laptop that appears to be effected the worst (IE. one minute running fine, then it times out trying to access for example BBC.co.uk). So I've got her to shut this down and dig out her ancient Vista Laptop. So far, she appears to be able to use her old laptop OK (IE. no time outs etc.). Looking suspicious to me! But as to what the hell it could be doing, is another story. TBC

Oliver342

Good point. Peer-peer Windows updating is certainly disabled on my PC. Installed Windows 10 myself on it when I built it 18 months ago and that was one of the many things that got turned off ASAP. But I doubt if it is disabled on my sisters shop built lap top. Wonder what impact this could in theory have!?!? I'll turn it off and see what happens. Also must check that some plonker that transferred her photos from her digital camera to her laptop (while she was away) has not enabled OneDrive to back them up (that would be some amount of data to upload). Doubt it, but worth checking.

Uno (aca. Matt)

I'll give you a phone some time tomorrow and talk through the apparent heavy uploading that looks to have gone on and try to work out when this started.

Thanks everyone for your help up to now. I'm sure we will get to the bottom of this.

Edited by MrBeeline (Wed 31-May-17 22:45:53)

Looks like it's sorted now.

It was my sisters new Lenovo laptop.

I checked windows/Network.../settings/Data usage/details (only appears to work for WiFi usage and not an Ethernet linked PC) and what's sitting at the top of the list... Onedrive with 2.77GB. Which I assume is all uploaded data.

So as it was a pre built machine, One drive appears to be switched on by default to sync documents and photos. Fine when she did not have any on the laptop. But while she was away for the weekend, some one kindly transferred all the photos from her digital camera, to her laptop. This then promptly tried to sync them to the cloud. Probably a good idea if you have fibre broadband but not on an ADSL2+ link with only 0.8 Mbps upward!!! As soon as it tries to do this, trying to do anything else (like using a browser) grinds to a halt.

I've just un-checked "start Onerdrive at startup". I'm assuming this will be adequate to prevent this happening again. Looks like you can uninstall it, but can't see the point.
Wonder how many other people are currently having problems like this and don't realise what the problem really is. Looks like you can limit the bandwidth it tries to use, but this already appears to be set quite low and it still causes havoc.

Thanks again everyone for their contribution.

At least now I wont have to listen to my sister moaning about having to use her 8 year old Vista laptop anymore. Whoopee.