Cogeco Still Charging Users For Usage When Modems Are Off As we've noted repeatedly, ISPs are so hungry to cash in on caps and overages, they're rushing toward implementing meters without making sure they work. Canadian cable operator Cogeco has been the absolute worst on this front, implementing metered usage charges back in 2009 -- and four years later still often struggling to measure usage correctly.

quote: (I) re-setup their Wi-Fi with a new password, made sure it was WPA2 with AES, turned of QoS (slight vulnerabilities), etc etc... They planned on being gone this weekend, so on Friday afternoon (around 12pm-1pm), we UNPLUGGED the cable modem. Today (Sunday), I checked their internet usage for yesterday (an entire day of it being unplugged), and they have 4.3 GB down and 300 MB up being recorded as internet usage. Whatever the cause (MAC cloning is a possible explanation), Cogeco users in our forum say it's Users continue to argue that Cogeco's meter is inaccurate when users can load it at all , and every so often the meter simply goes mad -- like last year when the meter was horribly confused by leap year . The latest is a user in our forums who claims his parents are getting socked with usage charges even when their modem is...off. The user's parents kept exceeding their 175 GB limit despite being light users, so he went to investigate:Whatever the cause (MAC cloning is a possible explanation), Cogeco users in our forum say it's not an infrequent occurrence . It's also not exactly uncommon with other ISPs; Suddenlink users recently complained about being billed for usage during power outages , something that forced the ISP to temporarily suspend metered billing. The best part remains that neither United States or Canadian regulators can be bothered to do their jobs and confirm that ISP usage meters are logging consumption accurately.







News Jump Are The Comcast-Charter X1 Talks Dead In The Water?; AT&T May Offer Phone Plans With Ads For Discounts; + more news Europe's Top Court: Net Neutrality Rules Bar Zero Rating; ViacomCBS To Rebrand CBS All Access As Paramount+; + more news Verizon To Buy Reseller TracFone For $7B; 5G Not The Competitive Threat To Cable Many Thought It Would Be; + more news MS.Wants Records From AT&T On $300M Project; Google Fiber Outages In Austin, Houston, Other Texan Cities; + more news States With The Biggest Decreases In Speed; AT&T Hopes You'll Forget Its Fight Against Accurate Maps; + more news AT&T's CEO Has A Familiar $olution To US Broadband Woes; EarthLink Files Suit Against Charter; + more news 5G Doesn't Live Up To Hype, AT&T's 5G Slower Than Its 4G; Cord-Cutting Now In 37% of Broadband Households; + more news FCC Cited False Broadband Data Despite Warnings; ZTE, Huawei Replacement Cost Is $1.87B, But Only $1B Allocated; + more Cogeco Rejects Altice USA's Atlantic Broadband Bid; AT&T Is Astroturfing The FCC In Support Of Trump Attack; + more news Big CBRS Auction Winners: Verizon, Windstream, Dish, Cablecos; Altice USA makes play for Atlantic Broadband; + more news ---------------------- this week last week most discussed view:

topics flat nest Lantase

join:2008-08-16

Chatham, ON Lantase Member Crazy usage tracker! Something similar happened to us, lighting struck the lines and fried the modem but somehow in the 3 days it took to replace the MTA we used 6 GB of data. Kearnstd

Space Elf

Premium Member

join:2002-01-22

Mullica Hill, NJ Kearnstd Premium Member Re: Crazy usage tracker! haha.



Kinda makes me wish they served costal New Jersey here in the US. Because I would love to see how their PR department would spin people getting overage charging when their house was sitting a block away from its foundation for the entire billing period after Sandy. neufuse

join:2006-12-06

James Creek, PA 951.6 38.6

1 recommendation neufuse Member starting to think... even with your modem off, the CMTS is still counting ARP/DHCP/Other traffic it is attempting to send to your offline modem by mac address as "usage" when it's not even on... I get on average 3GB a month of ARP/DHCP and other management traffic that I have no control over from our CMTS and Comcast at least tracks this as "usage" by the user.. Skippy25

join:2000-09-13

Hazelwood, MO Skippy25 Member Re: starting to think... 4.3GB down and 300MB up is an awful lot of ARP/DHCP and other management traffic in a single day.

TelecomEng

@rr.com TelecomEng to neufuse

Anon to neufuse

said by neufuse: even with your modem off, the CMTS is still counting ARP/DHCP/Other traffic it is attempting to send to your offline modem by mac address as "usage" when it's not even on...



Obviously it is more complicated than that, but most people do not know enough about how a CMTS works to get into the details... As someone who is familiar with CMTS operations, the answer is suppose to be "No." If you modem is not powered on and registered, the CMTS will not attempt to transmit packets to it. The CMTS tracks the state of every modem and removes the "adjacency" information to it when it is offline. As well, any traffic destined to your IP will be dropped at the CMTS, unless your IP gets reassigned. However, traffic counters are associated to your MAC and not your Layer 3 address, so if your IP did get reassigned, traffic to it would count against the subscriber to whom it was assigned.Obviously it is more complicated than that, but most people do not know enough about how a CMTS works to get into the details...

jjoshua

Premium Member

join:2001-06-01

Scotch Plains, NJ jjoshua Premium Member Measured billing is regulated At least, in NJ if I read this correctly...



I'd be curious to know if their measuring device has been inspected and approved. I'd also like to know where I can view the inspection sticker.



13:47B-1.5 TYPE APPROVAL

a) All new types of weighing and measuring devices of any description whatsoever and all

devices of older types to which may be added any alteration or new feature intended or

designed as an improvement to such equipment shall, before distribution or installation

thereof in the State of New Jersey, be submitted by the manufacturer thereof to the State

Superintendent of Weights and Measures for inspection and approval of type and operation,

except as provided in (a)1 below.



1)

Weighing and measuring devices approved by the National Institute of Standards and

Technology (NIST), National Type Evaluation Program (NTEP) need not be submitted for

prior inspection and approval of type and operation; however, the State Superintendent

of Weights and Measures reserves the right to require the manufacturer to submit a

prototype for evaluation at any time for cause.



b) The provisions of this section shall be construed to include and apply to all weighing and

measuring equipment designed for the determination of quantities in commodities sold or

offered for sale in the State of New Jersey, or for the determination of quantities where

service is sold or offered for sale on the basis of weight or measurement.



c) No weighing or measuring device as indicated shall be permitted to be sold or leased for use

in the State of New Jersey unless submitted for inspection and approved by the State

Superintendent of Weights and Measures as specified in (a) above and any equipment

distributed or installed contrary to the provisions of this section shall be subject to

condemnation.



13:47B-1.16 INSPECTION CERTIFICATES

a) Certificates of inspection issued by any State, county or municipal weights and measures

officer of New Jersey at the time of his inspection of any weighing or measuring devices

shall be retained by the owner or user of said devices in evidence of the condition of the

equipment so inspected or tested.



b) Such certificates shall be available at the place of business of the owner or user where the

weighing or measuring devices are installed or carried on the vehicle on which any weighing

or measuring devices are employed in the vending of commodities.



c) Such certificates shall be considered as the official authority for the use of such devices in

conjunction with the seal applied at the time of inspection.

humanfilth

join:2013-02-14

cyber gutter humanfilth Member Re: Measured billing is regulated, NOT Last I heard about in Canada is: Weights and measures Canada does not understand bits and bytes and sees no need to regulate a measurement devise that can cause people untold monetary harm when it gets out of whack or was never in whack in the first place.



Weights and measures Canada also consider bits and bytes to be imaginary as they can not be held in ones hand or pumped into ones gas tank, so there is no way of measuring such a thing and usage based billing has never existed so quit asking to regulate it.

Also Mbps is just a suggestion and please pay $70 a month for a 50Mbps service package while only getting 5Mbps because thats an 'up to' amount and "it freaking works, so shut up".



Plus government employees get lots of that free government Internet and please don't even think of requesting how much free Internet they get or what sites they surf all day long when they are supposed to be doing government stuff.

dhckmpwp

@teksavvy.com dhckmpwp Anon Re: Measured billing is regulated, NOT said by humanfilth: ...

Weights and measures Canada also consider bits and bytes to be imaginary as they can not be held in ones hand or pumped into ones gas tank, so there is no way of measuring such a thing and usage based billing has never existed so quit asking to regulate it.

...

yet they have no problem regulating electric meters. TheRogueX

join:2003-03-26

Springfield, MO TheRogueX Member Re: Measured billing is regulated, NOT Well, technically speaking you can hold electricity in your hand or pump it into your gas tank; neither are good ideas, however.

urbanriot

Premium Member

join:2004-10-18

Canada urbanriot Premium Member Cogeco could easily investigate this & update the thread... A few helpful Cogeco employees participate in the Cogeco forum and if the anonymous complainant registered, they could easily PM their MAC address to one of those employees to have their claims validated and investigated. MaynardKrebs

We did it. We heaved Steve. Yipee.

Premium Member

join:2009-06-17 MaynardKrebs Premium Member Re: Cogeco could easily investigate this & update the thread... There are many helpful class-action lawyers as well.

Probitas

@teksavvy.com Probitas Anon guys We know for a fact that GBs are a finite resource that need to be measured lest we run out of them. It takes time for them to be created by that army of internet hobbits, cut them some slack. It's certainly not about hammering customers with extra fees to protect television revenue. No professional company would stoop to such behavior just to make a buck.

RARPSL

join:1999-12-08

Suffern, NY RARPSL Member How current are figures? While I agree that something is odd about claiming usage for a modem that is not plugged in, there can be an alternate explanation which could be the source of the usage. This is how current the figures being displayed are. IOW: What time period is being counted and how often is the display updated? If the count is from Midnight to Midnight and the counter is updated at Midnight for the time period two days earlier (That is that at 12:05AM on Friday the update is for usage on Wednesday), when you check on Friday you see usage from Wednesday or before and Sunday's check is for Thursday and pre-Noon Friday usage. You have to check out the numbers for a few days (of non-connect) to see this. For example, if you go away for a week then get the counts before pulling the plug (and leaving) and once you return plug the modem back in and see the numbers. your comment..

