iPhone 3GS is sending lots of data on its own!

[jtara]

According to the accounts above, data is being sent via 3G not WiFi.

Yes. But it's speculated that it's being sent via 3G because the phone typically is sleeping when this occurs, and iPhone (at least until iOS 4.0) never connects via WiFi while asleep - only via 3G.

So, we'll see if it still goes via 3G if the phone is awake.

 

[THX723]

Yes. But it's speculated that it's being sent via 3G because the phone typically is sleeping when this occurs, and iPhone (at least until iOS 4.0) never connects via WiFi while asleep - only via 3G.

So, we'll see if it still goes via 3G if the phone is awake.

Ah I see where you're heading at.

Well, let us know what you're findings are.

 

[Yomo]

I have the same "transfers" .. around 2am every morning. This has to be just the total data used during the day that is registered on your account every night.

When I browse the web, download a podcast or watch streaming video during the day, I don't see an entry for any of those individual items. My only usage entries throughout the day are MMS and phone calls.

 

[closer1000]

I wrote in to Consumerist, Gizmodo, and Techcrunch about this issue. Not one of them has picked up on it. I did see it posted on iLounge, though. I seriously don't understand how this isn't news everywhere right now.

And again, some of us have huge tons of small data usage during the day AS WELL AS the huge late night/early morning one. To me, this means this usage isn't AT&T computing my full day of data use, especially since AT&T customer service has said they have no idea what it is.

 

[Yomo]

An easy way to test if it's "actually" sending data or whether it's just the total of the day's data usage is to turn off the phone (or turn on airplane mode) when you go to bed. If the entries still appear, we know it's just the totals registering on our bill at the end of the day.

It's just suspicious to me that I can stream audio / video throughout the day and not see any specific entries showing that data usage (other than the mystery usage at 2am).

 

[chakraj]

Maybe its using 3g and not wifi to prevent someone from seeing where its going and what it is. You need a cell catcher to track that data??

Let us know what you find out, I have a feeling it will be a brick wall.

 

[jtara]

Progress report: I am now set up to capture all traffic between my wireless router and cable modem, and can see the traffic originating from my iPhone to the Internet. So, I should be able to catch it this evening, assuming that it will go over WiFi if the iPhone isn't allowed to sleep.

For anyone wanting to reproduce the experiment, I've configured my D-Link DGS-1216T "WebSmart Switch" to separate-off 2 ports into a non-tagged VLAN. I've plugged the router into one port, and my cable modem into the other. I've configured the switch to mirror one of those ports (doesn't matter which one, they just carry the same traffic in opposite directions) to a third port, which is also on it's own VLAN for isolation.

I've got a spare Ethernet port on my Linux (Kubuntu 9.10) system connected to the mirror port on the switch, and am using Wireshark to capture the traffic.

Just need to filter so I only see the iPhone to get rid of the other machines on my network and all the ARP traffic on the modem, and I'll be good to go.

Opened up the Google app on my iPhone and saw the traffic!

 

[iphones4evry1]

oh my god. i just checked my bill. i can assure you that i'm asleep by 11pm on most nights. yet every night at around 2am, data gets sent somewhere. and it puts me well over 200MB without even using my phone!

Only thing I can think of is this is batch report of data usage. So, every night it just "bills" the record for a bunch of smaller sessions.

I would recommend turning the phone off when you go to sleep for a week, and then looking at your bill at the end of the week. Are the charges there, or did they disappear?

 

[vescaegg]

Midnight?!

This is definately strange! 48mb one night?!

Thing is, i have a 1st gen so dont even have 3g. How can it send this much on gprs or even edge (which i rarely get at home)!

26 May 10 21:00:00 mobile.o2.co.uk 100 0.000
27 May 10 00:00:00 mobile.o2.co.uk 2758 0.000
27 May 10 22:29:39 mobile.o2.co.uk 7 0.000
28 May 10 00:00:00 mobile.o2.co.uk 7269 0.000
28 May 10 21:00:00 mobile.o2.co.uk 103 0.000
29 May 10 00:00:00 mobile.o2.co.uk 1765 0.000
29 May 10 21:00:00 mobile.o2.co.uk 28 0.000
30 May 10 00:00:00 mobile.o2.co.uk 1177 0.000
30 May 10 21:00:00 mobile.o2.co.uk 80 0.000
31 May 10 00:00:00 mobile.o2.co.uk 486 0.000
31 May 10 22:03:35 mobile.o2.co.uk 15 0.000
01 Jun 10 00:00:00 mobile.o2.co.uk 508 0.000
01 Jun 10 21:00:00 mobile.o2.co.uk 46 0.000
02 Jun 10 06:00:00 mobile.o2.co.uk 6379 0.000
03 Jun 10 00:00:00 mobile.o2.co.uk 2931 0.000
04 Jun 10 06:00:00 mobile.o2.co.uk 3122 0.000
04 Jun 10 21:06:26 mobile.o2.co.uk 5386 0.000
05 Jun 10 00:00:00 mobile.o2.co.uk 187 0.000
05 Jun 10 22:38:41 mobile.o2.co.uk 5 0.000
06 Jun 10 00:00:00 mobile.o2.co.uk 48552 0.000
06 Jun 10 23:24:03 mobile.o2.co.uk 2 0.000
07 Jun 10 00:00:00 mobile.o2.co.uk 163 0.000
07 Jun 10 21:00:00 mobile.o2.co.uk 16 0.000
08 Jun 10 06:00:00 mobile.o2.co.uk 293 0.000

just read the updates above, it must be that days data usage registering at midnight....

 

[jtara]

Unfortunately, I seem to have missed the window last night. I'll try again tonight.

My intent was to capture WiFi traffic to/from my iPhone from 11:00 PM to midnight, given that the nightly transfers I see on my bill tend to be in that window.

I was watching election results, and as well wound-up doing a lot of last-minute fiddling - setting-up the iPhone to not screen-lock, disconnecting other devices from my network, disabling all email accounts other than MobileMe, etc. So, I didn't get started till 11:15 or so. No worry, I thought, they usually go around 11:45.

According to my bill, the transfer (a small one, 63K) occured at 10:59.

BTW, the largest "midnight transfer" I've seen on my bill this month was 11MB. They seem to have trailed-off substantially over the past few days, as well as the time has slowly shifted day-by-day by 45 minutes.

I also show two other transfers during the day, which suggests that these are not just coalesced billing for the day. (At least for ATT.)

06/08 10:59 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 63KB
06/08 03:09 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 238KB
06/08 11:16 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 102KB

Shoot, I'm obviously going to have to keep track of when I leave the house, even for a few minutes. I didn't go anywhere yesterday, but I was out in my car for a while fiddling with my iPad mount.

I did capture some traffic from 11:15 to 12:00, but it was uninteresting. Updating iCal holiday calendar and MobileMe mail. (The only mail I left turned on.)

BTW, iOS 4 users will probably see some decrease in their usage if they are frequently on WiFi at home. That's because 4 maintains a WiFi connection when sleeping - prior to 4 it can only use Cell data when sleeping. So, those email notifications you get? They're using your 3G data.

Unclear to me whether it actually does the download of the mail while sleeping or just that there is mail waiting. I would hope the latter. Otherwise, this would be a good explanation - maybe people are just getting big emails while the iPhone is sleeping. Naw, scratch that, because even if it DOES download the emails, I know that it only downloads large ones partially - you always have to tap to do a complete download of large ones.

It's nice that I have this set-up now, though. Will be interesting to look at the activity of various apps, and see how secure and/or nefarious they are. I would *hope* that Apple does that kind of testing, though, as part of the App approval process.

 

[jchung]

I have the same issue myself. But this month has been the worst so far. A couple days ago, I noticed the worst transmission I've seen so far:

05/29 02:23 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 170827KB

170MB in one night. Something isn't right.

Joo

 

[jamaggic]

upload

the data transfer when sleeping on edge/gprs/3g is 99% upload,,, from 10kb to as much as 15mb UPLOAD,,, if you clear the data tally before sleep you will see that essentially all of the data is upload,,, its as if a few kb are sent to the phone interrogating it and the phone responds with data transfer about something. I do not think it has anything to do with att or mobile as I'm on Tmob and do not have mobileme, mail is on manual and no change from night to morning when I check it. I laughed with the first post regarding NSA but now I wonder!

 

[leodavinci0]

AT&T charging for data I didn't use, anyone else?

Not charging money, but it is showing up on my full bill and keeping me from downgrading to the 200 MB plan. I should have an attached pic of a part of my bill showing data usage. Notice that around 2:00 AM every night somehow data is being used on my account. Sometimes it's small, but sometimes it's really large (~45 MB in one night). It has been happening for several months now it turns out, and the extra data amounts to about 200 MB per month. Needless to say I won't be able to downgrade at this rate. AT&T and Apple have no idea and suggest I restore my phone. Before I go through that ordeal, I wanted to know whether anyone else is seeing this on their bill.
Thanks for checking and any input you may have.

Merged from previous post.

 

[hcho3]

The best way to solve this issue is restore your phone like apple said. If you are sure that no one is using your phone behind your back, then do the restore. Also, it is possible that your iphone could be updating your apps, however, this is also not possible without entering your itunes password.
If the problem persists, then you need to go see apple genius. Also, I recommend getting a new sim card.

 

[leodavinci0]

The best way to solve this issue is restore your phone like apple said. If you are sure that no one is using your phone behind your back, then do the restore. Also, it is possible that your iphone could be updating your apps, however, this is also not possible without entering your itunes password.
If the problem persists, then you need to go see apple genius. Also, I recommend getting a new sim card.

Thanks, I guess I can try getting a new SIM first just to see.

 

[outphase]

It could possibly just be a sum of the day's usage when the individual uses were small.

 

[Sundowner]

Suspicious

Would be easier to figure out what's going on if there was a "firewall" type of app for iPhone.

Like Reagan said in the '80s: Trust, but verify.

I'm not so sure I trust Steve.

 

[Krevnik]

I also show two other transfers during the day, which suggests that these are not just coalesced billing for the day. (At least for ATT.)

06/08 10:59 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 63KB
06/08 03:09 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 238KB
06/08 11:16 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 102KB

So, a couple things to mention here:

All data "calls" on your bill will appear as outbound. That's because to open a data connection, your phone makes a "call" outbound to the data APN and sets up the connection that way. It is actually pretty similar to the old dial-up method of getting online in a lot of ways.

Another thing I've noticed is that AT&T does coalesce, but it isn't on a strict schedule. It seems to be based on a sort of algorithm that runs along the lines of: After so much time has elapsed since some amount of data was passing through, or the phone shuts off the connection to the APN, coalesce it and add the entry to the billing database.

So what I think you will see a lot of is that a user will see very similar coalesce times throughout the month with similar usage patterns, and the time of the 'call' seems to be when the coalesce/hangup happens.

Those who also use push data will tend to see similar coalesce times every day as the data connection will not drop very often if ever during the day, leaving the telco-side coalesce to be the only time to update the numbers (and some telcos will ignore when the call starts/end and just use the coalesce time).

 

[leodavinci0]

It's not a sum of the days usage. I haven't tried the SIM yet, and they are still looking into what can be doing it. I really don't see how a SIM card would cause this either, it only contains ID information from what I've read. Is this really not happening to anyone else?

 

[dieburnbot]

It's not a sum of the days usage. I haven't tried the SIM yet, and they are still looking into what can be doing it. I really don't see how a SIM card would cause this either, it only contains ID information from what I've read. Is this really not happening to anyone else?

I just checked my bill and everything seems normal on mine.

 

[alent1234]

a lot of my gmail email comes in at night. if you have yours to update hourly, this may explain it. if you're at home, why not just set it to use wifi?

 

[thrill5one6]

Push email on?

 

[hryan4740]

Check out this thread from a few days ago. https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/929936/

There's a link to an Apple support forum thread in there too.

 

[kdarling]

A lot of people are reporting this.

There are other threads about it. (Sorry, no time to search for them myself.)

Some claim the amount isn't counting towards their total.

Some think it's a daily total of outgoing data that's posted late at night.

Some think it's Apple sending user reports back to the mothership.

 

[elistan]

Just about every day, right around the 1:30am Central timeframe (but not exactly the same always) my data usage shows 15 KB to 17 MB sent (average of 3MB.) In the couple weeks since my billing cycle reset, my 1:09am to 1:49am usage has totaled 56 MB. For the most part, my iPhone was sitting in its dock, unused and unlocked therefore should be on wifi only.

We aren't the only ones with this situation. Remember the story a few years ago about a guy who took his iPhone to Canada for a few days and ended up with a huge bill because of roaming data usage? He had the same problem with early morning data usage. It's why Apple introduced the "Data Roaming" on/off switch in the OS.

I have no idea what the data usage is from. For all I know, it might not even be something the iPhone is doing - maybe its a problem on AT&T's side? I dunno. Maybe I'll try an experiment of turning the phone off every night for a week.