internet

John C.

For the first time I have had an email from BT saying I had over used my 5Gb thingy. What actually is downloading ? is using this site downloading ? emails ? what racks up usage most ? The only thing I have altered is I now have wireless broadband and my daughter has a laptop. She says she hasn't downloaded anything more than she would usually do on my computer. Yes I do believe her .
Can I check to see what has been downloaded in the last month ?

azzerb

Is your wireless secure/hidden? If no then it could be someone else using your network.

I can view how much I've downloaded this month through my firewall.

Anything in which you're getting data is classed as downloading, sounds daft, yet my family didn't realize that streaming data is actually downloading. My sister and mum didn't realize that viewing a web page is actually downloading data.

You should be able to get a daily download count off them, with peak download times etc. And i'm not sure, but also websites visited (don't know if they give a list of these to the public, though they record and store according to my IT lecturer.)

ColinJ

John, the two things that really eat bandwidth are video and audio. For most people that would be watching videos on YouTube and downloading mp3 files. Are you really sure that your daughter isn't carrying out either of those activities ? Perhaps you are normally close to the limit and this time you've gone just over?

My Internet connection is used 12 hours a day, 7 days a week since I work (and play) from home. Doing typical web-browsing and receiving a few dozen emails a day won't cause any problems. I also have a 5GB limit but I've never gone over 3.5 GB.

I can log into my member's page at my ISP (Internet Service Provider) and get a detailed breakdown of what bandwidth I've used - you ought to be able to do the same. It probably wouldn't help you find out if someone was piggy-backing onto your wireless connection though. You need to make sure that you are using a secure connection. I can pick up 3 neighbours' connections from here, but they are are secured so I couldn't use them. It's not just a question of bandwidth theft - would you really want to risk someone monitoring your online banking remotely or even downloading dodgy porn via your connection? Make sure that you are using WPA security settings since WEP is easily hacked.

By the way - uploading also counts towards your limit but.usually most of your traffic will be the other way. If you make a habit of uploading videos to YouTube or hundreds of photographs to FlickR, those activities are as hungry as grabbing stuff off those sites.

Infamous

I use about 3+gb a day. A 5gb a month limit? :shock: typical ISP rip off imo.

Look around and you will probably find an ISP that is unlimited for the same price you are paying (most just need a BT line to work).

redvee

Most ISPs will have some sort of daily/monthly limit. Virginmedia will throttle my connection if I go stupid during the peak periods (6-9pm), other than that I have no issues as above.

Yahoo do a widget called bandwidth graph, that might be of some help but not sure if this will register traffic on your router or the PC installed on.

http://widgets.yahoo.com/widgets/bandwidth-graph

fluff.

5gb a month is pretty low, when you consider an hour of TV downloaded from BBCs iPlayer is around 500mb, I would definatley look around for a new ISP if you're hitting this cap often. Many of them will say unlimited but have a slightly vague fair use policy, which is their get out clause if they feel like you're unfairly hammering the connection, read the small print

John C.

Thanks , that has given me some leads. While I'm here does SKYPE use many bites as this is used quite a lot to Canada ?

cee

John C. wrote:

Thanks , that has given me some leads. While I'm here does SKYPE use many bites as this is used quite a lot to Canada ?

Yes!

As has been said, anything you do on the internet, involves a tranfer of data (bytes).

If you look at a web page, what the Internet Browser does is download the page to a local cache (temp directory), and then shows the page from your machine, as if it was a text file that existed on your machine (because it does!)

Using video/audio services such as you tube, bbc iPlayer, Internet Radio, Skype, require the most data to be transferred (generally), and therefor, uses more of your bandwidth allocation.

John C.

Thanks again, makes sence now, how could I have been nieve enough to believe that Skype was free :oops:

ColinJ

John C. wrote:

Thanks , that has given me some leads. While I'm here does SKYPE use many bites as this is used quite a lot to Canada ?

I did some rough calculations using figures from the SKYPE website.

I reckon a GB every 35 - 280 hours with audio-only calls, depending on quality and how much of the time there is silence. You'd be hard pushed to use up your allowance on voice calls only!

If you had a webcam on, you would be using a lot more bandwidth. Maybe a GB every 5 - 15 hours. That could start to eat into your 5GB bandwidth budget. If that is the culprit, you could try lowering your video quality settings. I don't use SKYPE so I don't know how to do that, but I'm sure that there would be an option on a setup page somewhere.

cee

John C. wrote:

Thanks again, makes sence now, how could I have been nieve enough to believe that Skype was free :oops:

Ha yes....

Well, the service that skype offers IS free. It is just that you ISP has limited the amount of data you can transfer, for the amount you pay per month.

If you find that your data usage requirements are more than they used to be, it may be worth voting with your feet and shopping around for a better deal.

John C.

Yes she uses Skype with the web cam for an hour or so at a time and I have been amazed at the quality of the link.

oldwelshman

The higher the quality, the higher the bandwidth, and that includes porn vieo stream 8)