How much bandwidth do you "consume" daily?

[kander]

Hey,

Just wondering, as a sort-of follow up to a thread posted earlier today, how much bandwidth do y'all use daily?

This is Upload + Download

--K

[SusanUKF]

I voted 300-600 right now,but am not entirely sure....but figuring they said we used 7 for the month,I was trying to average it from there... I think it is going to increase dramatically as I have been using more lately and starting to learn how to do a more techie- type things on the net,and with my new unlimited bw,the numbers will increase!! Susan.

[Spin]

I voted 150-300. I really dont know how much I use daily. I know around I much I use monthly though.

________
Spin

[Edwin]

I voted "I dunno" because I have no idea. My internet connection is 8Mbps, totally unmetered, so I've never needed to worry about it...

[kander]

Heh, I can only say that I am pretty jealous of you, Edwin. I'm stuck with a 1024/512 connection here, and especially when doing some heavy filesharing (that is, downloading at 40 K/s and upping at 20 K/s) I can really notice things slowing down... I *need* a better connection, but alas, my parents don't really agree with that.

--K

[hadaso]

I voted 50-150MB, but this reflects only the average on the last 5 days (since I rebooted last time). The properties for the Internet connection on WINXP gives the upload/download data, and the duration. Mine was about 58MB upload and 222MB download for the past 5.5 days, and one day I we were away the whole day for a picnic, so I guess the average is just a bit above 50MB. About 20% of this is email, but my average email bandwidth is more like 1.5MB a day this month, and this month included some major archiving (in terms of MB) so it might be even less.
Now that I think of it, the 222MB download for the past 5 days included OpenOffice, so it might not represent my typical usage...

[bplat]

According to DUMeter, it's about 1.2Gb a day.

-bert

[LrdVader]

Originally posted by kander
I'm stuck with a 1024/512 connection here

If it makes you feel any better, a lot of Americans would LOVE that connection because of the upload speed. I have a 384kbps upload, and that puts me ahead of a lot of people. The most common cable upload speed here is 256, and there are still some major cable and DSL providers only offering 128. Most of the providers offering higher upstream speeds are using DSL, and a great many of us are out of range of the higher speeds, or out of DSL range entirely. So really, for upload-intensive activities like file sharing, you're doing pretty well, and I'm somewhat jealous myself.

We won't discuss my downstream speed, as it'll just upset you more.

To get back on topic... I unfortunately don't have any concrete measurements of my daily usage, as the drivers for my particular network card cause the Connection Status dialog that hadaso talked about to display numbers of packets, not numbers of bytes. It varies widely, though. Some days I only use my connection for web browsing, email, and AIM, and those days I probably only move maybe 100-200 mb, if that. At the other end of the spectrum, I have days where I fire up Bittorrent and move several gigs in both directions. Most days are somewhere in between. I ended up voting for 600mb-1 gig, since I'd guess an "average" day probably falls in that range.

[gdg]

My connection is about 3mb/sec, but bandwidth is not monitored...so I have no idea.

[SusanUKF]

That is what mine is too now and I now am using more than I ever have before---especially since I have my two cordless microphone headsets...(one wan't enough--they have to re-charge don't you know??) Susan.

[specialK]

How do I find out my daily bandwidth (I'm on a small network sharing a broadband connection)?

Originally posted by kander
Heh, I can only say that I am pretty jealous of you, Edwin. I'm stuck with a 1024/512 connection here, and especially when doing some heavy filesharing (that is, downloading at 40 K/s and upping at 20 K/s) I can really notice things slowing down... I *need* a better connection, but alas, my parents don't really agree with that.
--K

I simply close my file sharing programs when I'm using the internet for other things and notice it slow Kander.

[SusanUKF]

Kander is always multi-tasking though...he wouldn't know how to only run one or two things at once... Susan.

[kander]

SpecialK:

(watch out: strongly biased post ahead, close to a plug!)

I recommend DUmeter, available from Rose City Software, it's a great tool for keeping tabs on your up- and download speed. Just let it run in the background, or on the foreground if you want to see a graph of your bandwidth usage, and it'll log. You can install alerts when your usage reaches certain levels (like 80% of your datalimit, so you know you should cut down usage), beeps to go off at every so-many bytes downloades (I've got a beeper at every 102.4 MB I download, reminding me of how my downloads are doing)... It can also produce nice Daily, Weekly and Monthly logfiles in a variety of formats (CSV, HTML, TXT, Excel, Word, plus some obscures).

I'm pretty happy with this product... partly because I can use it for free. The joy of being a Beta tester

I think my current desktop is a bit of a demonstration of that, Susan... on my lefthand monitor I am running WinAmp (music program), Opera, DUMeter and FastCheck. On the righthand monitor is Crimson Editor fullscreen, with IE in the background (I know, I know Need to make sure things I make are at least a bit compatible with it... wouldn't run it otherwise) On top of those 2 monitors is a third, small one, on which I monitor my eMule (filesharing) up- and downloads. I love multi-monitoring!

--K

[specialK]

Cheers Kander, I'll have to check out DUmeter.

Special K (who wishes he more than one monitor to see Word, Winamp, Various Browser windows, Dreamweaver, Kazaalite and Soulseek )

[kander]

Tip on acquiring more monitors: Adopt a father, get him schooled and employed in the IT business. Everyone is switching to those flatscreens nowadays. All those HUGE 21" monitors are being disposed off. Oftentimes it's cheaper for a company to let some employees take a bunch of them home, then having to dispose of them properly.

Same goes with outdated laptops, mice (MX 700, I've got one I bought myself and a spare from the office, it was disposed of because they had 3 of them in the entire office, which didn't go well with the IT people, who wanted as little deviation as possible, with standard components), printers (Ancient HP Laserjet, was also scheduled for decommission because it was broken and HP no longer supported it (we fixed it ourselves and is working fine now...) ), soundcards (the IT department found a bunch of Soundblaster Live! soundcards in some of the computers they were upgrading/standardizing, same story as the mouse), CD-burners (they're using portable DVD burners now, 2 for every department with USB2 connections), a Keyboard/video/mouse switchbox, printservers, LPT switchboxes (all going through Ethernet nowadays)... the list goes on and on. Our house is slowly becoming an ancient computer parts junkyard. And I love it!

--K