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Sky DRX 890 saturating Internet connection on R010
My DRX 890 has been on the .13P release for a while.
Today I have found my internet connection is almost useless. I have traced this to the Sky box, which has the small Sky USB connected WiFi adapter.
I noticed a lot of Wireless activity. When checking my wireless access point I did indeed see a huge amount of traffic being generated by the Sky box itself - the Wireless MAC address reported by the Access point matches that of the Wireless MAC on the Sky box.
When I rebooted the Sky box the traffic stopped for a period and the internet was usable again. After a few minutes the same thing happened- a huge volume of data being downloaded to the Sky box causing the Internet to become sluggish for other devices.
I have 50 Mb/s Virgin Media broadband and get around 47 Mb/s from it so it is performing well.
While all this is happening the Sky box is not set to download any on demand content. The Red record light is not on.
This didn't happen before the R10 release
So is Sky now pushing content via the Internet or instructing boxes to download via that means?
Is this a bug?
Has there been a vulnerability exploited? It seemed to start today, first of the month.....
Either way I have now disabled WiFi on the Sky box and everything is back to normal.
I see many posts of people reporting very slow downloads now - could this be because some rogue process is consuming bandwidth at the same time.
I wonder if anyone else is noticing a lot of traffic to their box today?
Today I have found my internet connection is almost useless. I have traced this to the Sky box, which has the small Sky USB connected WiFi adapter.
I noticed a lot of Wireless activity. When checking my wireless access point I did indeed see a huge amount of traffic being generated by the Sky box itself - the Wireless MAC address reported by the Access point matches that of the Wireless MAC on the Sky box.
When I rebooted the Sky box the traffic stopped for a period and the internet was usable again. After a few minutes the same thing happened- a huge volume of data being downloaded to the Sky box causing the Internet to become sluggish for other devices.
I have 50 Mb/s Virgin Media broadband and get around 47 Mb/s from it so it is performing well.
While all this is happening the Sky box is not set to download any on demand content. The Red record light is not on.
This didn't happen before the R10 release
So is Sky now pushing content via the Internet or instructing boxes to download via that means?
Is this a bug?
Has there been a vulnerability exploited? It seemed to start today, first of the month.....
Either way I have now disabled WiFi on the Sky box and everything is back to normal.
I see many posts of people reporting very slow downloads now - could this be because some rogue process is consuming bandwidth at the same time.
I wonder if anyone else is noticing a lot of traffic to their box today?
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Comments
I have the box with wifi built in though.
How do you disable the built-in wifi, I didn't think you could?
Since doing this things have been back to normal, albeit without any on demand functionality.
Switch the "OnBox Wireless Support" option within the hidden setup menu to off.
You can access the setup any by pressing: SERVICES 001 SELECT quickly.
You could then have set up a wired ethernet connection to your router and retained the on demand facility.
I have a 50Gb data allowance limit on my phone which I use as a hotspot for internet use where I live (no landline connection).
Last month I had the latest Sky box with built in wifi installed, by the 25th I received a message from my telecoms to say I had used up 40Gb of my allowance!?
Never been anywhere near this level of usage in the past, so called my service provider and they asked one simple question: "had I added a new device that connected to the internet recently"......
Guess what, Sky box wifi is now NOT switched on.
What the hell were Sky doing that used up so much data I didn't ask to be used?
If you were not using On Demand, why did you connect it to your wifi?
To discover what it offered perhaps.....?
And it took you 40GB of allowance to find out.......... I would have disconnected waaaaaaay before then!!
Rather a broad statement based on one or two 'possible' examples, neither of which are proved to be anything of the kind
There are millions of Sky boxes connected to the net, and no one else complaining about it.
really? you think?
damn those pesky russians.
If he had been surely he would have expected a big chunk of data to have been used, and it sounded like he didn't.
If the boxes are downloading large amounts of stuff over the broadband connection without the owners' knowledge, that is indeed a cause for concern for anyone not on an unlimited connection!
I have no evidence that my box has been doing that BTW.
and this is why it's a good idea not to have series link for on demand content.
it can easily go wrong due to the poor data provided by the channels.
that's quite a leap you've made there.
Really, you believe 2 unrelated instances suggests all?
What if 2 unrelated Ford Fiesta's get flat tyres, does that suggest that all Ford Fiesta's have faulty tyres?
I think you need more than 2 to make these assumptions, and trust me, there would be hundreds, if not thousands, saying it if it was the case.
I know all that, but if you are using it on a Mobile contract with limited usage (or any situation where you have limited usage), surely you would have checked your usage well before the warning e-mail, make sure nothing was amiss (or even just to see how much data it is using in general usage).
as you "run an ISP" i suggest you improve your firewall.