Back In The Dark Ages

It seems that all of our monthly internet allowance had been used up and we are now on dial-up speeds. How horrifying! We are back in the dark ages!

Seriously though. I don't know how the kids have managed it but we used up all our bandwidth and we received an email last night. Too many you tube videos I expect and too many online games. Thank goodness our internet gets reset at midnight tonight. Mark and I didn't see much point in purchasing an extra data block when we would probably never use it all before our data allowance gets reset. Plus we thought it might teach the boys a lesson on what happens when we run out. I don't think it makes much of a difference to them to be honest but at least they now know we aren't always going to buy more bandwidth. They also need to be reminded that computers aren't just for the internet! Kids! They're making my hair turn grey have extra wisdom highlights.

My Heart Broke A Little On Saturday

Be warned this is a relatively long post for me but I have a lot to write about on this particular topic. So please bear with me. 

You will not believe what has happened this past weekend. In fact I was so shocked on Saturday morning that it has taken me until today to even get my head around what happened. In fact I am sure that even you will be surprised and shocked when you read about it.  I've warned the boys that anything that happens in this house is fair game for a blog post. I don't think they believed me when I reminded them of this .. So here's what happened...

I woke up at around 6:40am Saturday morning when I heard Mark talking with Angus in the lounge/dining/computer room about how Angus had gone over the limit with his internet allowance.

We've got our home network set up via a Smoothwall (it's a computer that our internet connection gets plugged into that we access so we can get on the web, it's also a firewall that protects our home network). Smoothie lets us track how much bandwidth individual people use. It does other stuff too but I wont go into that its a bit complicated. Any way we have allowed 20GB per person each month. If the boys exceed their limit they need to negotiate with us to be given more. That basically means I make them a slave for a while and get some much needed (cleaning) jobs done & they get more data allowance.

What our bandwidth looks like so far for this month.
Click on the photo if you wish to see it better.

Mark had asked Angus what he had done online to have used up all of his bandwidth in such a short time. Of course Angus used the usual "I don't know" response. It's something the boys say often and its usually a cop out. They think by saying that it will get them out of trouble - it doesn't btw it only makes us more annoyed. You think they would have learned by now not to say it. Then he said he had been playing one of his shooting games online with friends. Call of Duty or something like that.

So Mark gets Angus to give him his laptop & he goes through the programs to see what on earth used up all of that bandwidth. The first surprise was a bit torrent (wiki) client was running. For those who don't know what that is it's where you can download programs, movies, music etc from other peoples computers. Basically its a file sharer. Problem is a lot of copyrighted stuff gets shared illegally through them and we do NOT condone that sort of thing on our network. BUSTED! Not only that Angus had illegal software on his machine! He lost all of them!

The next surprise was when Mark checked the netbook (which Angus uses for school work only) and found Skype on it. Angus quickly stated that the school had installed it this time and he only activated it the other day. Angus new that he wasn't allowed to have it. He was reminded a few weeks ago when he had been to his besties house and downloaded it there. It was uninstalled. Angus then installed Skype on his netbook a day or so after we had gotten Angus to get rid from his laptop.  BIG mistake!!
I mentioned in a post a while ago how Skype servers detect what type of internet connection you have and if you have a pretty good internet connection it uses your connection (and bandwidth) as a super-node. So it chews up your data allowance. When we found that out Skype was banned from our network.

The final surprise that is the most shocking of all. I cried when I heard it. Its something that I wont forgive or forget very easily. My 15 year old son had PORN on his computer. Yep PORN!! He had it hidden in folders on his laptop and on his memory sticks. He said that he got it from friends. He probably even downloaded it himself. I'm in two minds as to whether I should dob him in to the school or not as I have no idea if the kids involved swapped all this stuff whilst at school or at each others homes. He will most likely lose his job as an IT Captain if we do. 

I thought this child was still innocent. Still a good boy. Still following the beliefs that we had taught him. Choosing The Right. My heart died a little on Saturday morning. My baby has now LOST our TRUST.

Angus has now lost all internet privileges for the rest of this month. He has lost administration privileges on his computer. If he wants to have any new programs installed he needs to ASK Mark for permission. If Mark deems that the program is a legal copy then he might consider installing it for him.
Angus will also be subject to weekly and random searches of his laptop, netbook and memory sticks.

I am wondering if we have given him enough 'punishment' or if we should be a little bit harder on him. Angus knows he has to do as he's told pretty much straight away. He also knows that he WILL have to EARN my TRUST again. It will take a bit of convincing to get that back.

Skype is EVIL

I have come to realise that Skype is EVIL and very DEVIOUS! I am glad that I don't use it but my boys do. I have made Angus uninstall it. Brodie has his own internet connection now so its up to him whether he stops using it or not.

I guess I should explain why I believe it is evil. Don't get me wrong it does have it's good uses but they are awfully sneaky.

Unlike other VoIP services, Skype is a peer-to-peer system rather than a client–server system, and makes use of background processing on computers running Skype software; the original name proposed – Sky peer-to-peer – reflects this.

Some network administrators have banned Skype on corporate, government, home, and education networks,citing reasons such as inappropriate usage of resources, excessive bandwidth usage, and security concerns^{. (from wiki)}

Take note of the quote above on the excessive bandwidth usage. Our internet data allowance gets reset on the 26th of each month. We have an AWESOME plan where we get 80 GB for peak times and 120 GB off-peak. Since our internet was reset 9 days ago we have used a whopping 36.5 GB of our peak time allowance. That was because Skype was running in the background of Angus's laptop.

When we switched to this plan a few months ago we weren't even reaching half of our allowance that is until last month when we used 3/4 of it. Now I know why. If you have a darned good internet connection Skype detects it and uses you as a 'server' for other Skype clients.

If you use Skype just make sure that you don't leave it open when you aren't using it or you may end up with all of you data allowance gone before you realise it.

I LOVE My Interwebs!

The Internet can be a wonderful thing. I just managed to pay a whole heap of bills without having to leave home. Now I can concentrate on more important thing .. like shopping! :D just kidding I hate shopping really. I just like finding bargains but who doesn't?

One More Day To Go

It's definitely been a killer not having a decent internet connection until after 11pm each night. I've stayed offline as much as possible so that Brodie has the most access at the moment. He becomes extremely unbearable at times when he isn't able to 'talk' with his friends on facebook. Its just easier to let him have his computer time than to cause any problems by saying get OFF the computer!
Thank goodness I only have to wait another 24 hours before everything resets for another month.

I have been making good use of my time away from the computer by watching some shows I had recorded and doing some more knitting. I'm about half way through making another Santa. Not too sure what I will do with this one yet, perhaps post it to my Spirit Sister. I was thinking about all the people who have seen my photos of the other Santa & Mrs Claus that I shared on facebook. A few of them wanted to buy one but I have no idea how much to charge for them if I do sell them. To be honest I would just be happy with the cost of the wool & the filling. I'll have to think about it because I'm not sure if I want to commit to making a lot of them as there have been about 6 requests so far which is an awful lot of knitting & sewing. I don't know. What do you think?

Just In Case I Disappear .. .. ..

Someone hacked into our wireless access on our home network :(

We have a rather generous download allowance of 50 gig per month for peak times and 50 gig for off-peak. I've been checking it regularly over the past few weeks because I knew that with the boys being on school holidays this week & next week we would use a fair chunk of it while they were home.
So last week when I noticed that we only had about 6 gig left I went into our ISP's shop & paid for an extra block of 10gig for our peak times. That was on Wednesday afternoon. I thought cool, that would give us 16 gig until our account resets on the 26th. That should be MORE than enough to cover us.

Oh boy was I WRONG about that! I checked our account on Wednesday night to make sure that the allowance had increased, which it had, but I was almost floored by what I saw. I can check out how much we've used because our ISP lists what we used each day. As I said I was almost floored. Somehow from 10am that morning until about 4pm that afternoon almost 6 gig was used! I don't know how that was possible because there was hardly anyone home during the day. In fact three out of the four of us weren't even home for the most part & Mark was asleep for part of the time and when he was awake he wasn't online.

Anyway, Mark phoned our ISP the next day & queried it. I was hoping it was an error on their end but it wasn't. Mark has now put extra security on the wireless access with a super-duper password that hopefully no one will be able to crack. Since he's done this our downloads have slowed dramatically. I guess that means this 'hacking' has been going on for a while now.

Just so you know, if I disappear before our account resets on Sunday, its because we are on dial-up speeds and I'm having problems waiting for pages to load.