Typical Home Bandwidth Usage? 656
Broadband writes "With a growing number of internet service providers imposing hard bandwidth caps, I too will soon find myself with a limit. In typical Slashdot fashion I use the Internet for everything from movie streaming to online backup and just realized I have no idea how much data traverses my pipes on a monthly basis. While I have wised up and installed a bandwidth monitoring solution, it'll be some time until I have a normalized average. So my question is: What is the average monthly data usage in your household? How many people share the connection and is there anything you've found essential yet bandwidth intensive that you couldn't live without? (E.g. VOIP, movie downloads, streaming audio, etc.)"
I have true unlimited (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't get my connectivity through a major provider. I get dsl through sonic.net. They are a AT&T reseller, but with huge advantages. They have not once ever mentioned bandwidth limits. I have static IPs, and I am allowed to run servers (mail, web, etc). Of course, I pay more than the average joe-user. About $70/month, but I feel it's worth it.
I've never measured my usage, but your question has me curious. I'll install a meter and get back to you in a month. LOL
150GB (Score:5, Interesting)
I already have a cap (Yes I'm Australian, don't start the whole "OMG WE'RE SICK OF AUSTRALIANS IN SLASHDOT" BS. We're the best friends you'll have now since we've been on caps for years and can tell you how best to stay within them). It's a relatively large one compared to others, domestically at 150GB. I use it all up mainly on torrents for things like movies, games and the odd program and Linux iso.
It's not hard to monitor usage especially if most of it comes through downloads and not through browsing. Browsing can be a killer. Especially these days when a lot of sites have embedded video ads. Those, plus 5-10MB animated .gif's that you don't expect can really eat into your bandwidth. Best solution is Firefox with Adblocker and NoScript. Will save you a lot of headache when you check your usage and wonder "Where did all these GB's come from!".
No limit (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I have true unlimited (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I guess my ISP is responsiblee (Score:3, Interesting)
Pretty much every Aussie ISP will break it down into days used, and some will even be able to tell you what ports you thrashed.
I have this nice little program in my system tray that shows me how much I have used in my "month", how many days remaining, how much I have been using per day and how much I have remaining per day.
But back to the OP, about 65-75GB a month between 2 people.
Download caps are not as bad as they are made out (Score:5, Interesting)
Hi all. My first post on Slashdot even though I've been reading it since the late 90s. Finally got around to signing up. I'm Australian and as most Slashdotters know, Australian ISPs all impose caps.
Personally, I'm on a 25 GB per month cap (after which my speed is slowed, but I am not charged more). My monthly usage generally ends up at around 18-22 GB, without me needing to monitor my usage or worry about it. My connection supports 2 people who are both heavy browsers. Plenty of youtube, streaming radio etc. Perhaps a TV show from a torrent every second day. Skype on the weekends to call my family overseas.
Basically, unless you are a MAJOR torrent leecher, you will find that you won't have any problems whatsoever staying under 250 GB (Comcast). I have one tenth of that cap, download movies/TV shows every other day, surf heavily, run a home FTP server, but I have no issues staying under 25 GB. Keep in mind that my uploads are not capped (not sure if Comcast's 250 GB includes uploads or not).
A poster above mentioned the issue of people launching attacks on your connection that flood you with unrequested packets. Yes this would be counted against your usage. But I've never heard of it being an issue...certainly hasn't happened to me in my 8+ years of using capped broadband. In the very unlikely circumstance that it did happen, call the ISP and they will be able to see the attack in their logs, and here, they would be reasonable and not charge you for it.
Now onto the subject of why I think caps, provided they are clearly stated, are generally a good thing!
Contrary to some people's knee-jerk reaction however, the reason Australia has caps is not because it's a technology backwater. Far from it actually - DSL speeds here are generally faster than in most parts of the US (although I admit, FiOS rocks, where it's available).
Australian bandwidth caps basically exist because:
a) most English speaking content comes from the US (i.e. most traffic is international, vs mostly domestic in the US); and
b) we are an island a long way from anywhere. Those undersea cables don't pay for themselves. Peering and transit costs here a an order of magnitude higher than in the US. ISPs thus have to impose monthly download caps to stop a few high volume users sending them bankrupt.
But on the plus side, because we pay for what we use, there are a number of advantages. My ISP, like most in Australia:
- Is far less contended than most US ISPs. Download speeds are always meet my connected speed. I have an 8/1 Mbps connection, and I get that speed, all the time (~850 kb/s downstream and slightly over 100 kb/s up). Whereas some US ISPs, when I've used them, seem sluggish in peak hours.
- Never fiddles with my traffic. No bittorrent deprioritising, no deep packet inspection, no random throttling or any of that nonsense. In the US though, well you know all about the shenanigans some of your ISPs have been up to.
- Allows me to run anything whatsoever on my connection. Whereas most US DSL providers I have read the AUP for have 20 clauses about how you cant run servers etc.
The other thing to note is that because we get charged for what we use, ISPs can allow us faster speeds here, without worrying that we will completely trash their network by leeching 24/7. In the US, your DSL connections mostly seem to be 3 or 6 Mbps, with maybe 768kbps up. In Australia, DSL is generally from 8, up to 24 Mbps down (ADSL2+), and if you have Annex M support on your modem/ISP, you can get up to 2.5 Mbps upload. Personally, I'd rather faster speeds with a cap, than slow speeds but unlimited downloads and annoying packet tampering.
The final thing to note is that virtually all ISPs here have massive download mirrors which aren't counted against your quota. For instance, my ISP has full Sourceforge, MajorGeeks etc. mirrors that contain most large things I would ever want to download anyway.
So yeah - don't fear your (very generous!) download caps over there. It's good news for you. Get the 0.1% of people off the network that abuse the hell out of it, and speeds will be faster for the rest of you.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Average of 7 Gig (Score:2, Interesting)
The whole family uses the internet connection spread over 4 computers. We watch Youtube video's and for work I use the net a lot. Yet an average month uses up about 7 GB.
I just cannot imagine how a 250GB cap is a limitation in anyway unless you are a major torrent host.
UK ISP transfer limits (Score:3, Interesting)
I get a fully unshaped 8Mbit connection with 15GB transfer per month for £20.
Anything downloaded between midnight and 8am is not counted towards the cap
One of the tech gurus at my ISP wrote a fine blog article [plus.net] about how UK ISPs are charged for their transfer. It's a completely different market economic to the US, which is why we've had transfer limits for some time.
NTT in Japan 900 gigabyte upload per month (Score:3, Interesting)
Bloody hell! (Score:3, Interesting)
I am so sick of these whiney posts.... wah wah wah, I might be capped soon.
I've been capped since around 2002.
I live in Australia, I'm capped to 80gb, I download around that each month (which is a lot), and I have 4.5mbit down and 1mbit up.
I also pay $109 for this privilege (although that's on top of $15 per month line fees).
Don't worry about your usage, 250gb is heaps, you will normalize once you're capped, I guarantee it!
Also if you find that your cap is too small, upgrade, change your ISP, or come up with strategies to maximize your cap.
For instance my ISP (http://www.adam.com.au) has separate caps for traffic inside of Australian than it does for outside of Australia. Additionally it also has CommunityNet on its exchanges which basically turns that exchange into a private LAN. Another method is to find people near you and setup your own LAN or sharing network.
There are many ways to maximize your potential.
This is not the end of the world.
You've still got it way better than us and a lot of the rest of the world.
Emegency VoIP? (Score:5, Interesting)
15GB 512K ADSL (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Get your terminology straight (Score:3, Interesting)
Right. But it's long-since been accepted as synonymous with 'quantity of data transferred', even if it's technically incorrect.
Re:150GB (Score:1, Interesting)
In NZ we have always paid for traffic, and the caps are staggeringly low.
Telecom offers 3GB @ $40.
vodafone offers you 1GB/mo @ $70 (although that includes a home line).
Even the all you can eat bandwidth is typically limited to 40GB, but its not cheap, and its slow.
Sigh.
Re:Bloody hell! (Score:3, Interesting)
How is being pissed off about getting worse service (for the same money) than you used to whining?
Listen, you live in a (large, ok) island, many many km away from everything else and your country population is less than Texas's - so it's reasonable to expect higher costs in internet access, shipping, etc.
Maybe it is _you_ that needs to get over that fact, instead of calling whiners to people who has their service capped for no reason other than corporate greed.
What's next, you are going to say that Amazon charges you 10x for shipping that it does to New York residents and that they shouldn't complain if their fees doubled overnight? Or maybe you pay a lot more for plane tickets to everywhere but Zealand?
Re:I have true unlimited (Score:5, Interesting)
I doubt I'd find a use for that speed, anyway.
Weird ass restrictions (Score:5, Interesting)
There doesn't seem to be any restrictions around here. It's never been verboten to run servers, or download/upload as much as you can. ... positive [iliad.fr] (pdf).
That's because my ISP [www.free.fr] has heavily invested in its infrastructure, and the results are
If US ISPs spent half as much on lawyers and lobbyists, maybe they could afford bigger series of pipes.
Re:I have true unlimited (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Download caps are not as bad as they are made o (Score:2, Interesting)
No I honestly don't think so (re collusion/corruption). Australia is one of the least corrupt countries in the world (very little corporate-government interaction or influence compared to most other places, although Scandinavia and NZ have us beat on that front).
The caps are there simply because of the peering/transit costs mentioned, as well as the fact that the last mile copper phone lines are owned by ex-government monopoly telco Telstra (think AT&T, but worse), which charges other ISPs a fair bit to use 'their' lines.
There have been ISPs offering true unlimited here. They all went bankrupt within 18 months. It just can't be done here on a sustainable and economic basis. The US is a different kettle of fish though and I do agree with you that caps aren't necessary there.
Other than the 'Telstra issue' though, ISP competition here seems to be working well and is leading to constantly increasing caps. Average caps for home connections have gone from 5 GB to 100s of GB in just a few years.
Keep in mind my 25 GB quota is small! Most of my friends have 100+ GB quotas, and they are affordable. I just chose 'faster' over 'more data'.
But yeah, I'm not fundamentally disagreeing with you. The US market needs more competition and can support unlimited internet. I was simply drawing the distinction between the two places, and saying that life with a cap isn't bad at all. But I'm not saying you shouldn't fight against them in the US.
Re:I have true unlimited (Score:5, Interesting)
I wish they would expand their fiber offering down my way (Dublin). I'd kill for that.
Sonic tech support is the best I've ever seen. When I first signed up and was on the phone for basic info (like ip address, dns, etc) they asked "what operating system are you running?" I gritted my teeth and answered honestly, "Linux." Instead of the usual "we don't support that," the response was, "Cool! What distro?" When they lost one of their major switches, I called to ask them if the problem was on my end or their end (at this point I didn't know it was a dead switch), the owner of the company took my call! They didn't act stupid or pretend nothing was wrong. They told me they had a hardware failure and expected everything back to normal in 30 minutes to an hour. The had things back up nearer to the low end of the estimate. I'm sure you know all this since you are a customer. I'm telling this for everyone else's benefit so they will consider signing up with sonic.
Finally, they never pretend everything is perfect and they never have a problem. Information about problems and outages are always published on their website. I don't expect perfection. I love a company that is honest. I will stick with sonic for a long time.
Modem stats. (Score:3, Interesting)
ATM data rate Kbit/s down 16910 up 1011
Below the stats of my Fritz!box modem, please note I'm often away for weeks.
Last month included some Linux iso's and usenet binaries.
Use might get as high as 500MB.
Online Time Data Volume Connections
Period [hh:mm] total sent/received Number
Today 11:20 5054 MB 107 MB/4947 MB 1
Yesterday 24:00 8748 MB 178 MB/8570 MB 1
Current week 11:20 5054 MB 107 MB/4947 MB 1
Current month 11:20 5054 MB 107 MB/4947 MB 1
Last month 742:08 118319 MB 2832 MB/115487 MB 36
Re:1.5GB up, 24GB down (Score:3, Interesting)
Have you considered running a Tor node instead ?
I've already set up nodes several times in the past, but neither Tor, nor Freenet are currently worth the legal risks for me. Where I live, someone has been in prison for the past 3 months [indymedia.org.uk] because he showed animal rights' activists how to encrypt their PCs... Therefore I'd rather wait for out-of-the-box support in mainstream browsers so I don't need to explain why I am using Tor or Freenet (I'll just tell them it's built into my browser like SSL).
Yeah, I'm paranoid, but wouldn't you be when people in your neighbourhood get thrown in jail because they've encrypted their e-mails and hard disk?
Re:I have true unlimited (Score:1, Interesting)
Does it really matter if you ISP is worse? (Score:2, Interesting)
Does it really matter if you ISP is worse? Comcast is doing this for control.
Comcast makes most of its money from cable TV. They do not want people watching TV or buying movies and downloading them over the Internet. That cuts into Comcast's main profit center. It's no different than the RIAA trying to force customers to buy CDs.
Comcast does not want you using the full bandwidth of your pipe 24/7 -- no matter what you're doing.
If Comcast can weaken the 'Net Neutrality concept -- and a bandwidth cap is a first step in that direction -- then Comcast gains more control. Comcast knows that they can turn that control into additional revenue at some time.
Your argument seems to be a "race to the bottom" one. i.e., "My ISP in another country is worse so what are you griping about."
Let's instead work to force ISPs to be honest. If you say I have 6mbps (or whatever) of bandwidth and a 24/7 connection to the Internet, then I should be able to use that 6mbps * 24 * 7. The fact that this may cause Comcast's network some add'l work or problems is not the customer's concern.
Re:I have true unlimited (Score:3, Interesting)
I do miss Adelphia, though. During their bankruptcy stuff they boosted our connection from 1.5 MB/s to around 2.5 MB/s. After about a year of that, Road Runner took over and slowed us back to where we should have been.
It's those bloody hackers! (Score:2, Interesting)
Although I'm running a small server with just my web site and SSH access, an increasing proportion of my bandwidth is taken up (read "wasted") by the scumbags trying to hack into my machine. This is obviously worse in the summer when all the script kiddies decide to play hacker and now that the little bastards are back to school my ISP should stop sending me those warning notices. The problem is that even if I block them at my router firewall they still use bandwidth and complaining to Russian and Chinese ISPs gets you absolutely nowhere.
I just recently signed up for netflix (Score:3, Interesting)
I got an xbox360 for my birthday earlier this year. When I heard the new dashboard update would allow netflix streaming, I had to get a netflix account.
I watch a lot of Internet TV. I play a lot of games. I download a lot of porn. I surf a lot of web.
My ISP, comcast has said, I can only download 8GB a day. If I'm watching a marathon of TV from netflix instant, I will blow through that in about 12 hours.
Tack on the fact that I download demos from xbox live that are usually 1-1.5GB apiece. I play PC games regularly. I am also a steam user who buys a new game at least once a month. I download Linux isos also, though not regularly. I can see how I easily use up that much bandwidth a day.
Comcast is gonna get sued. There's gonna be a class-action. Since they are the only provider in my area that provides the speeds they do for residential services, there is no alternative. Comcast oversold their network capacity. I'm doing nothing wrong. I'm using the Internet access that I signed up for and paid for. Comcast knows they need to expand network capacity but are unwilling to do so. They take a hit in cost and can't charge any more for more network capacity. They'd just oversell it again. Considering that comcast charges a universal service fund fee since they provide Internet access and local telephone service, the USF should provide them with ample monies to enlarge their member's capacity.
When netflix institutes HD streaming, I won't be able to take advantage of it because comcast wont provide me the bandwidth or througput to do so. My ISP will effectively prevent me from enjoying the services I pay for throughout the web.
Comcast thinks that I'm a heavy Internet user. They gambled on grandmas signing up for cable modems and then using them 2 or 3 times a week. They lost and now they're welching.
That being said, they're even charging illegal modem rental fees to me and countless others. Check your original documents from your comcast installation. There's a document titled, "Terms and Conditions for Sale of Cable Modem". I have that document, meaning they sold me a cable modem, not rented me one. Now they're charging fees illegally. They're really gonna get sued. I'm not the fat guy at the buffet. I'm the skinny guy who eats a normal amount. They are the ones trying to save their money by limiting the amount of trips to the buffet you can make. They say I'm eating too much. Well, now even in India, they're eating as much as me. In Japan, they're eating three times as much as me and they pay half of what I do.
Re:Does it really matter if you ISP is worse? (Score:1, Interesting)
ISP's oversubscribe their upstream links.
That's how they can make a living.
The point is that if the ISP isn't making money, it's a failure of their business technique. If they're oversubscribing their lines and the available bandwidth can't handle it, it means they predicted usage patterns incorrectly. Why is that my problem?
The real problem is that many of these national ISPs took billions in tax credits to build out data infrastructure and they bet on keeping the money instead of investing it. Now we have a third-world network and it can't handle the growing usage. Instead of upgrading the networks, the ISPs are trying to kill the demand. In the end it isn't going to work, but I suppose as long as it works this quarter it's fine.
I would like to see regulation requiring discounts for below average data usage if there will be additional charges for above average usage.
Gotta wonder about advertising (Score:1, Interesting)
All the talk of caps has got me wondering how much those friendly little streaming video commercials eat up? The problem is if you do a lot of surfing they can be near constant. I often leave CNN open on a browser and it constantly does updates but most of them are to update the video commercials not content. Where as I doubt they take up the majority of my web surfing and usage I can easily see them pushing me over the top. In effect their commercial which I stubbornly refuse to watch can help drive me over the limit and either threaten my service or force me to get a more expensive service with a higher cap. I'll guarantee you that if I ever get a warning the first thing I'll do is stop surfing those sites. I really would like to know just how much of my bandwidth is being eaten up by advertising?
Re:Does it really matter if you ISP is worse? (Score:5, Interesting)
ISP's oversubscribe their upstream links.
That's how they can make a living.
Exactly. Like most networks, it's simply not cost effective to build it to handle the maximum peak traffic.
For an example, we have around 800 computers with gigabit ethernet connected to 40 gigabit edge switches connected to one central gigabit switch.
Most applications are run directly from an application server that has two 1 gigabit ethernet connections to this central switch.
This link is thus hugely oversubscribed.
But having gigabit all the way to the workstations cut the time to start applications down to between a fifth and a tenth compared to having 100mbit edge switches with gigabit uplink, since it is unusual for people to start the same applications at the exact same time and using the same functions at the exact same time.
It's the same with low cost, high speed internet services.
You get the benefit of fast response and short load times, but at a much, much lower cost-level than a service that could offer this speed 100% of the time to 100% of the customers.
As long as the ISP's upfront and honest with the fact that they can't offer all its customers 100% utilization 24/7, thus having a cap, it should be alright.
If they have a cap but don't tell you about it, that's when you should start looking for another ISP.
Re:Does it really matter if you ISP is worse? (Score:4, Interesting)
First of all, do you think "throwing a fibre" costs nothing? Usually, the big ISPs prefer private peering to the public peering model, so they have to "throw a fibre" between each of their routers in a city. That ain't cheap. They also have to pay for the cross-country and cross-continental lines connecting their own routers. Have you ever seen the costs associated with laying a fiber between New York and London? That ain't cheap, either.
Second, ISPs have TONS of equipment to support their operations. They don't buy NetGear switches, either -- it's all Cisco/Juniper/Alcatel kinda stuff.
Finally, not all peering arrangements are settlement free. It totally depends on the size of your ISP and the size of the other guy's ISP.
You seem to be under the impression that the big ISPs aren't spending any money on their networks. Perhaps you should take a look at their SEC filings and see how much capital they spend.
Re:I have true unlimited (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes. I'll bet one in 5 do. And I'd also be willing to be that activity has a lot to do with seeding/torrenting, and none of it is Linux distros.
Look, it's this kind of behavior that causes us to not be able to have nice things. Tragedy of the commons and all that. Because people want to eat up all the resources they can, now those resources are scarce and have to be regulated. This kind of crap reminds me of when one of the phone companies up here (Canada) started providing all you can eat long distance in the 90s. Suddenly their overnight usage shot up dramatically. After a little while they got curious to see what the hell was going on, and they started putting line monitors on a few of the long calls. The were not actually listening in, just measuring changes in the voltage indicating activity, and found on some of the calls there was a strangely uniform voltage for hours sometimes. Intrigued, they started phoning some of these people, suspecting there might be equipment problems. What they found instead was that this activity was caused by people who were couples, in different cities, calling each other before bed, saying good night, and then SETTING THE PHONE DOWN ON THE PILLOW all night so they could "sleep in the same bed". Just because they could. Do you consider that "reasonable" usage of long distance lines?