strange internet slowdown due to uploads i dont do?

[birdman]

what would you say is reasonable amount of bytes over 10/15 mins from start up for RX and TX

Unless you routinely stream from the box yourself then it TX total should be quite low. Given that VM were reporting you as using 91GB then it would show up like a sore thumb.
The figure should take quite some time after boot to reach 1MiB. If the box is sending the data it will be getting into the GiB range.