[ryusoma]

Hi all.

I'm trying to help troubleshoot an ongoing issue with our BES server and Telus service.

We have a corporate plan for a sizeable number of berries, 50+ with (IMHO) a far-too-small 100Mb data plan. We started this package only a few months ago, but shortly after (the last 3 months), Telus has started sending us bills with THOUSANDS of dollars in overusage data charges as a lump sum per user, and we have no way to account for it.

A)They have not been forthcoming with any breakdown as to how this data is being used or where it is going, but shouldn't that be easy as they are the network provider, and they are the ones accounting for the totals and billing for it!?

B) It seems to be about a dozen users each month that are being slapped with $500-3000 usage, but 3 months isn't a very big trend and it isn't consistently the SAME dozen users. What this says to me is that it's not a particular nastyeviluser downloading porn on his office phone, but some sort of automated process or background task running unattended or excessively on many or all the devices. I've noted that my phone is consistently one of the lowest usages, but still hits a $30-100 overage just checking office mail, Gmail and the rare webpage lookup. (this just reconfirms that the plan is simply a bad choice and too small.)

C) What tools are there on the server side that would allow us to track this usage per user and restrict it, or is it even possible if it isn't messaging-related, just direct Internet access? AFAIK, this BES server was just set up with the basic defaults by the service provider and noone has done anything with it since to lock down policies or usage.

My first thought was Minimoni on the user side, but this doesn't support CDMA berries at all.

Any help is appreciated.

[TargetIT]

The usage is outrageous - we've been on Rogers rip-off 60 bucks for 25 megs and I don't think ANYONE has ever gone over. However, we do have a problem with people roaming to other networks (we're close to the US border) and being dinged roaming data charges (which add up). I had to force the users to only use Rogers, otherwise it would happily drop Rogers and pick up Cingular.

[ryusoma]

Originally Posted by TargetIT

The usage is outrageous - we've been on Rogers rip-off 60 bucks for 25 megs and I don't think ANYONE has ever gone over.

It's quite definitely data usage, according to them. But what type or where it's going.. they obviously have no incentive to address because the longer they stall, the larger our bills get.

I've checked the last 3 months' bills, and it seems to be about 12-15 users each month, but roughly half change each month. All of these ~dozen have data overages ranging from $300 up to and over $3000.

If it was a consistent number or group of users this would be far easier to define. We've also warned all users about tethering (DON'T) and these are not teenagers camping Facebook 24/7 either. Telus of course lumps together everything that isn't voice-calling into a single 'Other Services' billing category, so we have no ability to define the type of traffic from their end.

I guess the only question I can really ask the admins lurking here is, exactly what types of traffic DO pass through the BES directly, and what other types would at least be accountable to the BES? I mean, certainly email messages through a work account are but if they've downloaded the Gmail applet, are we SOL because that goes straight out from the berry to gmail.com?

[TargetIT]

Well most internet traffic still goes through the BES - it's only BIS accounts that would be sent to the device itself.

[qc_metal]

If they have Opera installed...doesn't that bypass BES and use BIS directly? Just throwing that out there.

You can limit third party apps/chat programs, etc. through IT policies, too.

Have you looked at your log files for any kind of evidence?

[richard205]

Check that your policy restricts access to data,

under the group policy go to
Browser Policy Group > set Allow IBS browser to false
Security Exclusivity Policy Group > (ive got everything set to false here)

ive also been stung by high data usage charges because users were going through our comms provider rather than through our BES environment.

Under your MDS connection, Properties

>Proxy > Proxy Mappings. Point this to your proxy.

Hope that helps