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Monitoring data on Android is Inaccurate?

M

Mastadex

Newbie
I'm currently using NetSentry and I just recently downloaded Network Monitor. It reports that I have used roughly 738Mb worth of data this month. My service provider (Telus, in Canada), is reporting that I have used 908Mb this month. There is a day-by-day breakdown on their website of my usage. The question is, is Telus right or is the networking application right?? Is the Phone doing more networking under the hood that is not being captured by the app?

Obviously I will trust Telus because if I go over my limit using their numbers, I will be charged more. They are the larger stakeholders in this case.
 
Check and see how Telus monitors Mb useage. It could be like minutes where if you are on the phone for 4 mins and 1 second they call it 5 mins, perhaps they have something where if you use 1.2 Mb they call it 2
 
Can you post the breakdown? (Remove/redact EVERYTHING even remotely personal first -- remove any ID numbers or lat/long from gps or whatever -- and err on the side of caution: when in doubt, if some number is personal/sensitive just remove it)

If not no biggie this is just a curiosity of mine what these things look like. I'd be hesitant as well.


Metered usage is going to kill innovation on the interwebs
 
Telus gives me a day-to-day breakdown. Unfortunately NetSentry doesn't do this, it only gives me a total monthly breakdown. This is why I downloaded Network Monitor, because it gives be a fine-grained list of usage. Here is what I used within the last few days according to Telus:

31-Mar-2011. Data Usage 2923 Kilobytes $0.00
30-Mar-2011. Data Usage 10298 Kilobytes $0.00
29-Mar-2011. Data Usage 2047 Kilobytes $0.00
28-Mar-2011. Data Usage 63173 Kilobytes $0.00
27-Mar-2011. Text Messages 1 Messages $0.00

It doesn't look like the round up to the highest Mb. Maybe the highest Kb, but that shouldn't contribute to a 200Mb difference between the two logs. I sent a total of 70 text messages throughout March and seeing that those are under 140 character (I think), they shouldn't add up to 200Mb.
 
Text messages theoretically shouldn't count against data usage too -- since they are sent on the constant connection your phone maintains to the towers so that the towers know where you are. This is the whole reason behind the 140 character limit. They are squeezing the text message into a communication that your phone makes anyways. MMS would be a different story though.

Anyways, part of the difference might have to do with how they define kilo and mega.

Originally some in computer science defined a Kilobyte as 1024 bytes. Wheras traditionally the metric system defines it as 1000.


So in your case

738(MB) x 1024 x 1024 = 773,849,088 bytes

738(MB) x 1000 x 1000 = 738,000,000 bytes

Which is approximately a 35 MB difference.... Still doesnt account for what your're seeing but it may be part of the issue. You should check how both programs define kilo and mega.

These discrepancies are another reason that consumers need to fight against metered usage. When you have metered electricity (at least in the US) you can go an read the meter in your house, and that meter is the final word. The electric company must use that local reading. Telus is Canada (I think?) but I'd imagine there are similar laws there too.

Electric companies are also regulated as "utilities" which is a major difference in the US that ISPs and wireless carriers want to avoid. They want to charge you money like a utility, but they dont want to have the same rules to follow.

Anyways, sorry if that isnt much help, but I suspect you could call them and get some clarification on what they are measuring and complain that you're seeing a discrepancy.
 
I agree with you on Metered Use. We're fighting a usage based billing motion in Canada as we speak. Anyway, I'm forced to wonder if Telus is counting the packets that are being resent due to corruption. TCP resends packets if the checksum doesn't match. This is done at a lower stage in the OSI model and before the OS even acknowledges the packet itself. If there is a lot of data loss, 200Mb of resent packets might fill in the gap.

If this is the case, I cannot do much about it and it's a limitation of the software.
 
Very interesting point. Yet another issue against metered billing. How is the consumer supposed to know when TCP packets are being dropped. And how is that even their responsibility....it's like their charging you for their own poor connectivity/backhaul/spectrum availability.

Seems like a lot of packet loss too.... 18% ? by my quick (read: bad) math
 
It sort of makes sense. I listen to music on my way to work through areas of poor reception. I can see that the connection could request packets to be resent if the connection is poor. Assuming that a packet from the radio station is entirely full (4Kb), when it re-requests the packet, that adds an extra 4Kb onto the connection. The request may go as far back as the radio station's server or just the cell tower. Either way, it could account for the 200Mb difference (Roughly 50,000 packets, 4Kb in size).
 
Streaming music would most likely mean UDP though so dropped packets just dissovle off into the abyss...

TCP gets resent if dropped, but UDP doesnt (AFAIK).

I suppose they could be measuring packets you aren't getting but who should pay for that? Seems legally grey to charge a cutomer based on that. I suppose they could put a clause in there "well we sent the packet to the tower, not our fault you never got it." (Or, the legalese version of that).

This is why the meter itself needs to exist on the device. Without that, the only financial incentive is to improve the backhaul and not the covereage. It's like "we're not responsible for dropped packets, but you are responsible for paying for them."

Interesting convo btw, thanks.
 
I notice you said you just recently installed Network Monitor.

Did both methods of monitoring traffic have the same start date/time? Or had one already started the beancounter before the second method was installed?
 
alostpacket said:
Streaming music would most likely mean UDP though so dropped packets just dissovle off into the abyss...

TCP gets resent if dropped, but UDP doesnt (AFAIK).

I suppose they could be measuring packets you aren't getting but who should pay for that? Seems legally grey to charge a cutomer based on that. I suppose they could put a clause in there "well we sent the packet to the tower, not our fault you never got it." (Or, the legalese version of that).

This is why the meter itself needs to exist on the device. Without that, the only financial incentive is to improve the backhaul and not the covereage. It's like "we're not responsible for dropped packets, but you are responsible for paying for them."

Interesting convo btw, thanks.
Click to expand...


The irony would be the meter they put on the device would need to communicate with the carrier presumably using data to retrieve useage stats
 
You could try to use several monitors at the same time and see what they all show and see which one of hem is the closes to your provider's info and use that then.
 
Ps. I contacted Telus and they actually round up your KB usage.

So if you use 0.5kb they'll say you used 1kb. Which can add up quickly for instance.

I'm also on the Telus network.
 
barqers said:
Ps. I contacted Telus and they actually round up your KB usage.

So if you use 0.5kb they'll say you used 1kb. Which can add up quickly for instance.

I'm also on the Telus network.
Click to expand...


Even if they were rounding up kb a 200 mb difference would require over 6000 rounded up uses daily
 
Yeahha said:
Even if they were rounding up kb a 200 mb difference would require over 6000 rounded up uses daily
Click to expand...

Yes but it just adds up quickly. And can be a portion of why there's a difference. On my phone it says I've used 62mb, whereas on the Telus website it says I've used 92mb=94208kb

Once I notified Telus and found out their block size, I inputted this into 3G Watchdog pro, and now after 2 days watchdog says I've used 12033kb and Telus says I've used 12096kb. Very close. So it can make up a portion of the difference.

It also depends, if you're running an application like Google maps, where they download thousands of tiny tiles by scrolling the screen, each tile is around 52kb, let's say they round up 0.5kb per tile. On rMaps I've downloaded 18,000 tiles (on wifi thank god) so that's 9000kb ish in my 2 hours/1day of usage on that app.

So 9mb*30days = 270mb a month. Correct me if I'm wrong, but depends heavily on what app you're using.
 
Marge80 said:
Thanks! I know I haven't been around here and preparing for syndication is one of the reasons I've been so busy. I have a couple of other things in the pipeline that may or may not pan out. Hopefully, the syndication thing works--I'm going to love doing three cartoons a week.
Click to expand...

Um, I think you're not really posting according to what this thread is about. Sorry but even if I wanted to watch live tv I'd watch it with a reputable site.
 
* introduces barqers to the
report.gif
button *
 
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