Verizon WiFi issues

EddieWalker · Nov 9, 2014

I have a Verizon MiFi Jetpack for our internet usage and WiFi. It works fine and we don't have any complaints about it, but I am having a serious issue with how much data it's using. Randomly during the day when we are not here, early in the morning when we are asleep and late at night, my account says I've used half a gig of data or more. At first we where told that we need to keep our Ipads in airplane mode and not allow them to connect to the cloud because they never stop sending data when they are turned on. I just got off the phone with customer support and they said that there is no way for them to know what is using all the data because of all the apps out there and what they are doing. Their suggestion is to turn off the MiFi Jetpack when we are not using it. Seems simple enough, and what I'm going to do.

Does this make sense? Is there some way to eliminate or stop our Ipads from sending data, even when they are in airplane mode?

Could the MiFi Jetpack itself be doing this? Karen thinks that it is sending data on it's own, or that it gets caught up in some sort of cycling mode where it's trying to connect to one of our devices and sending data trying to make that connection.

Thank you,
Eddie

/pine · Nov 9, 2014

If you want to know who/what is using your wireless network...there is (some free) software available to show you what devices are connecting to your network...

search suggestion: wifi monitoring

rekees4300 · Nov 9, 2014

EddieWalker said:
Could the MiFi Jetpack itself be doing this?

I use a 4620LE MiFi Jetpack and haven't had issues with high usage. I do turn it off when not in use. I think it sends small amounts of data (ACK/NAK) to Verizon in order to maintain a connection even when you are not using it. But doubtful that's your problem. If your Jetpack WiFi is open (not password protected) there is a possibility other people are connecting to it. As I recall it has a range of 300 feet. Any neighbors or roads that close? Don't have Ipad so can't comment.

sseelhoff · Nov 9, 2014

Do you have auto update on? iPad and you installed apps will automatically update and install in the background. Also-if you have location services activated, this can be using data. My wife leaves her iPad on 24/7. At least twice a week it pings in the middle of the night and lights up. Every time that happens, it's some update being pushed to one of her apps.

As others suggest, turn off the Wi-Fi on your iPad when not in use. If you continue to see high data usage when you are not around, that means someone is pirating your signal.

Professor Marvel · Nov 9, 2014

My jetpack rolled into the next month a week ago and when I looked at the usage next afternoon it showed a 2.75 gig at 3 am exactly. I guarantee no one was even awake at that time. I did not bother to contact Verizon because they constantly add charges etc that they explain away. I am sure they will tell me some BS story. No one lives close enough to hit my signal and exactly 2.75 gig at exactly 3 am is awfully coincidental. I will shut it off next month at the same time during rollover night.
If another service would work at my house I would switch. They seem to know things like this.

MossRoad · Nov 9, 2014

EddieWalker said:
I have a Verizon MiFi Jetpack for our internet usage and WiFi. It works fine and we don't have any complaints about it, but I am having a serious issue with how much data it's using. Randomly during the day when we are not here, early in the morning when we are asleep and late at night, my account says I've used half a gig of data or more. At first we where told that we need to keep our Ipads in airplane mode and not allow them to connect to the cloud because they never stop sending data when they are turned on. I just got off the phone with customer support and they said that there is no way for them to know what is using all the data because of all the apps out there and what they are doing. Their suggestion is to turn off the MiFi Jetpack when we are not using it. Seems simple enough, and what I'm going to do.

Does this make sense? Is there some way to eliminate or stop our Ipads from sending data, even when they are in airplane mode?

Could the MiFi Jetpack itself be doing this? Karen thinks that it is sending data on it's own, or that it gets caught up in some sort of cycling mode where it's trying to connect to one of our devices and sending data trying to make that connection.

Thank you,
Eddie

Are the iPads the only WIFI devices in your house?
Do you have any cell phones with WIFI enabled?
Do you have any WIFI entertainment devices, like AppleTV, internet TV.
Do you have a Satellite receiver that has an internet connection?
Any other computers with internet?

Just some things to think about.

mikehaugen · Nov 9, 2014

My concern about turning the device off would be that devices could be waiting to cennect during the "off" time and transmit whatever they were waiting for when you turn it back on. I think you need to find out what is using the data and disable that feature.

Something that helped us, (we have similar setup) is when the wife was on facebook, all the embedded video on a page would play automatically. She turned off that feature and it cut her data usage nearly in half.

EddieWalker · Nov 9, 2014

My house is 800 feet from the road and my closest neighbor is half a mile away. The next closest house is over a mile away. I don't think anybody is steeling data. Heck, I can't even connect on it if I'm out in the yard with my mini Ipad. Karen has a regular Ipad and she has a lot better luck connecting to it. Both of us keep them in airplane mode when we are just reading on them or not using them. She uses hers more then I do, and it's possible that she might forget to turn it back to airplane mode when she isn't using it, but I find it impossible to believe that happens very often. This is almost daily when the data spikes at half a gig or more. Times vary from 3 in the afternoon when we are both at work, to 2 am when we are asleep and in the early afternoon when we are almost home, like 4:30pm

When we are online, our usage is between 100 to 200 with an occasional 300 megabyte day. We don't watch movies, but from time to time will watch a youtube video. That might happen once a month, and it might be for half an hour worth of videos, so that's easy to account for.

Karen has and Iphone 6, I have a Samsung 6 phone. Both have their own data plans and rarely break a gig for the month.

I do have smart TV, but we've never tried to download a movie onto it. Do they do anything with wifi on their own?

Eddie

Professor Marvel · Nov 9, 2014

If you do turn your jetpack off does it still run that half gig? If so does it happen when you first turn it back on as Mike suggests?

radioman · Nov 9, 2014

check who is using it under lan tab http://mifi.admin . Compare your mac id of your wifi devices you have and the list on your mifi .
I suggest using assign static ip address to mac addresses instead of dhcp this way you have complete control of you mifi.

olllotj · Nov 9, 2014

We had the exact same problem and tried everything we could to fix data usage with our computer and iPad but never saw any difference in usage with the verizon jet pack. We spent countless hours on the phone with verizon and only ended up more frustrated because they did not help and continued to tell us it was our fault. We live in the country wheee no one else would be tapping into our service and we have no other options than cell company jet packs. Luckily my father in law had a sprint jet pack that was grandfathered in to unlimited data usage and he let us borrow it for a few months. We used everything the same as usual and didn't try to be careful about our usage since it was unlimited and guess what? We were only using 2-3 gigs a month. With verizon, we chewed through 10 gigs in the first day of the month when we first got it and then we had to shut it off and not use it so we wouldn't have to pay overage charges. Same thing happened the second month. After that we didn't use it at all and turned it off permanently but continued to pay for it every month until we had enough and cancelled the jet pack and our cell phone plans and transferred everything over to sprint. Now we don't have to worry anymore. The coverage isn't quite as good, but at least we aren't being over charged on our data usage and don't have to worry about being charged overage fees. Much better working with an honest company with good customer service.

newbury · Nov 9, 2014

Eddie it reads like a potential security problem.

As full admin look for recently created files. Your computers might have been compromised and you could be serving up bad stuff without knowing it.

s219 · Nov 9, 2014

I doubt the iPads would be burning up data like that, but you can turn off all the auto updates to make sure. And look through your apps to make sure none of them would be using network in the background.

If you have any Windows computers that use the WiFi, give them a serious look. There are many things they could be doing that would cause this, including having a virus or trojan running. They are the internet security equivalent of walking around with your pants down around your ankles.

MossRoad · Nov 10, 2014

EddieWalker said:
My house is 800 feet from the road and my closest neighbor is half a mile away. The next closest house is over a mile away. I don't think anybody is steeling data. Heck, I can't even connect on it if I'm out in the yard with my mini Ipad. Karen has a regular Ipad and she has a lot better luck connecting to it. Both of us keep them in airplane mode when we are just reading on them or not using them. She uses hers more then I do, and it's possible that she might forget to turn it back to airplane mode when she isn't using it, but I find it impossible to believe that happens very often. This is almost daily when the data spikes at half a gig or more. Times vary from 3 in the afternoon when we are both at work, to 2 am when we are asleep and in the early afternoon when we are almost home, like 4:30pm

When we are online, our usage is between 100 to 200 with an occasional 300 megabyte day. We don't watch movies, but from time to time will watch a youtube video. That might happen once a month, and it might be for half an hour worth of videos, so that's easy to account for.

Karen has and Iphone 6, I have a Samsung 6 phone. Both have their own data plans and rarely break a gig for the month.

I do have smart TV, but we've never tried to download a movie onto it. Do they do anything with wifi on their own?

Eddie

Just because your phones have their own data plan doesn't mean they aren't using the WIFI in your house. Most cell phones will try to use WIFI instead of the data over cell signal by default if the WIFI is enabled on the phone. As an experiment, turn off the WIFI on your phones for a couple days and see what happens.

forgeblast · Nov 10, 2014

We had one of the jetpacks or something like that..., I would use it for selling at craft fairs when i needed to run a credit card. We ended up getting a home network extended from verizon (free!)and use the wifi off our dsl so we stopped using it.

kidr · Nov 10, 2014

Same problem here. We used to average 3 gigs a month. suddenly overnite we use 2 to 3 gigs. Always shut the box off when not in use. At one point we reached 4.6 and the counter froze for week. WTF. The subscription runs out this month and I won't renew.
What plans do people have that enables them to download movies and play games online? I can't even use youtube.

Dutch445 · Nov 10, 2014

something could be doing a backup to the cloud,
i had a google account start doing that and burned a bunch
of data so i was able to turn that sync off,

there was a movie about that, very funny!
(private video uploaded from a couple's tablet to several others thru the cloud)

Soundguy · Nov 10, 2014

Here's my story on the situation.

I work in a slightly remote area, no dsl for internet is available. We have been using 2 broadband cards for 2 PC's at work for a few years, but sprint suddenly raised their prices from affordable to way-crazy prices.

For a few days i limped along at work using my smartphone as a hotspot but my service is ATT and i get 1 bar if the phone is on top of my book shelf.. 0 bars on my desk, and 2 bars ont he bookshelf if the stars line up correctly... so that wasn't an option.

Picked up a Straight talk Unimax hotspot at walmart. It is a pay as you go deal, it uses the verizon network. I picked that as another worker has vz and gets 4 bars of signal... plus the straight talk is about 20% cheaper than the vz plan.

According to data usage from looking at a few years of sprint bills, our 2 office computers used about 1 gig each, per month. thus a 4 gig plan for 2m was ideal. Got that. didn't make it 2m.. made it more like 6-7 weeks. ok.. no problem.. might be somebody put their smart phone on the system, i know the office manager brought in her nook tablet. So the next renewal i got the 5 gig plan. still can fall short.

If you go intot he control page of the hotspot using a web browser, you can see exactly who is logged in. While our password is not huge.. it is a password, so no one can use our data by just signing on like an open connection. I've never seen anyone logged into the hotspot other than our office laptops and a office workers tablet or phone.. yet, we too would notice huge data usage.

A couple ideas came to mind. Some phones will backup to cloud using wifi vs data plan. i know mine will. and if you take lots of pics or vids.. that's alot of data over time. also updates.. especially win 8 devices when they get updates.. that can be huge.

Anyway. we have now experemented with turning the hotspot off at the end of the day at work and turning back on when we need it. this is the 3rd month of using it so i'm going to see what that does for us. in the end we are still saving about 3 times as much vs the price those broadband cards went to from sprint.

Pixguy · Nov 10, 2014

Another option is to change the password on the wireless router/jetpack and only "give" it to the tablets you want, preventing any phones being able to access the hotspot.

Soundguy · Nov 10, 2014

once you give it to one person.. everyone in the office is gonna have it. IE. if the paswword is available to a guy's tablet in the back.. you know his cell phone is gonna have it too.