I've noticed something interesting with our network traffic metrics from Linewize; PayPal is ranked sixth in total traffic for the past week, mostly coming from student phones. Here's a quick breakdown of the data for reference:
- YouTube: Upload 49GB, Download 1225GB, Total 1274GB
- Hudl: Upload 1074GB, Download 100GB, Total 1174GB
- Office 365: Upload 146GB, Download 328GB, Total 474GB
- Google: Upload 52GB, Download 237GB, Total 290GB
- Microsoft: Upload 127GB, Download 139GB, Total 266GB
- PayPal: Upload 39GB, Download 180GB, Total 220GB
- AccuWeather: Upload 49GB, Download 169GB, Total 218GB
With PayPal being mostly blocked, it seems like a lot of traffic for something that isn't widely used in our school. I'm curious if this is due to it retrying to fetch updates or if there's something else going on. Today alone, we've already hit 42GB (8GB upload, 35GB download). Has anyone else observed this?
5 Answers
Students are getting clever with their internet access! They're probably using VPN tunnels or domain fronting to bypass restrictions, which can explain the unexpected PayPal traffic. You might want to investigate network usage more closely.
I work in a similar setting, and we've experienced the same issue. For us, what seemed to be PayPal traffic was actually due to HTTPS inspection being bypassed, with students using Hotspot Shield to mask the traffic. Definitely look into that!
I wonder if your monitoring tool is accounting for the recent changes with Twitter's domain. Since x.com is now associated with Twitter, maybe there's some mix-up happening with your traffic stats. It could be worth checking that out!
Honestly, I think the app might be misreporting. Updates should come from Google or Apple, not directly from PayPal. Check if PayPal shares an IP with something else, or just ignore it for now.
It's hard to believe it's really PayPal traffic. Do you have a next-gen firewall (NGFW) with application control? It might give you clearer insights into what's actually using bandwidth.
I don't think we have a NGFW in place. That could definitely help clarify things!
Yeah, that makes sense! I’ll have to check if there are any patterns with VPN usage among the students.