Free Internet Usage Tracker?

Question about Internet Usage!?

• I have had cogeco cable for two year, I have had their internet for a couple of months now. Now i will admit that I have gone over my internet usage before, but never to the extent I saw 2 days ago. I went to my mothers for thanksgiving, and I was gone for 4 days. When I check the usage for the month to make sure I didn't go over, it said that I used 14 gigs for 2 of those days, the other 11 gigs and the final one 8 gigs a total of 43 gigs in four days! I have never used more then 5 in one day (and I watched 6 movies that day!) Especially when I wasn't even there! The 4 techs I talked to were rude and unwilling to help me till I finally got a man that was an angel he told me to unplug the modem for two days and check the internet usage. I checked the internet usage today for yesterday (its been unplugged since I discovered the 43 gigs that was on tuesday night) and the website says I was still using the internet not a lot mind you but like, 0.20 gigs of downloading, and 0.13 of uploading. Is this normal when its unplugged? My train of thought is that if its reading that when its unplugged what is it reading when it plugged in this came to me because the night I unplugged it all i did was check the usage it said I used a whole gig to do that which i find hard to believe. Mind you I am not a technician or know very much about computers. Can someone let me know if modems should be reading even tiny bits of internet usage when its unplugged. Thank you!!

• Answer:

  Unplugging your modem/router does not disconnect your internet, it just removes the infrastructure point (the spot where all the users connect to to gain access to the internet). That small amount of data might have been the service provider "pinging" your network. When you do something on the internet, your computer sends information to the modem/router, which then sends the information out of your house and to the service provider. The service provider reads that information, and accordingly sends some back, and tada! You have an "Internet Circuit." That but of information could have been the service provider sending information back to your network. This information is what checks for activity and keeps the stream open. However, this is only a guess. You should try contacting the company and asking them not "What," but "Why." The other activity could be background stuff from either you, the user, or the modem/router. However, I don't see how it could accumulate that much usage. The next possibility that pops into my head is a rouge user or attacker that's accessing your network. This could be another physical person a building over, or your computer could be infected (ZOMBIE COMPUTER). This would explain the high usage, as the rouge user could be using your internet, or could be ARP Poisoning your network (that's not worth explaining). However, I find these extremely unlikely, as it's just not normal in general, and also they could not have done so with an unplugged modem/router, so that would be saying that the first abnormal thing is a coincidence with the other abnormal thing. What? I honestly don't know. It's something to look into. But either way, those are some possibilities.