Broadband Usage And Monitoring
The Internet and access to the Internet has now become an important part of our daily lives and although we usually don’t give much thought to broadband usage neglecting to pay attention particularly when dealing with mobile broadband costs could end up costing you a lot more than you think.
When we talk about broadband usage what we really mean is bandwidth usage or in other words how much data are we uploading and downloading from the Internet on a monthly basis. Once you start monitoring your Internet bandwidth usage you may be surprised at how much data you are actually using.
With home broadband speeds increasing year on year and the ability to download movies online coupled with the number of videos the average user will view it is not surprising that Internet service providers are looking to try and cap the amount of data you can download particularly at peak times.
When most people think about broadband usage they assume that because their monthly allowance appears to be large usually in the 20 to 30 GB range that they are in no danger of going over their free bandwidth limit. However as I’ve already mentioned movies can chew up a lot of bandwidth and it’s a wise person who monitors their home broadband usage ideally daily but weekly will often do.
When it comes to mobile broadband we need to be even more careful because not only are the allowances very small often only 500 MB but the cost per megabyte if you go over your data limit can be horrifying. If you check some of the larger service providers you will often discover that it’s not unusual to see a cost of over 26p per megabyte! Now that’s per megabyte there are 1000 MB in a gigabyte so you can imagine how surprised you’d be when you saw your monthly bill and discovered you’ve added up to £260 worth of extra charges!
One option particularly with mobile broadband but also with home broadband is to get an unlimited broadband contract in that way it doesn’t really matter how much data you use although you will still be subjected to a fair usage policy so if you’re into downloading hundreds of movies every evening you could still get a threatening letter from your Internet service provider.
If you’re like me one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways of monitoring your Internet data usage is to get one of the many monitors are currently available. These are small programs that run continuously on your computer and monitor and then display in a graph how much data you’ve uploaded and download it in a selected time period.
Some of these programmes are free but there are some excellent good value for money (or in other words cheap) broadband usage monitors that not only show you how much data you are using but allow you to set levels at which you will be alerted. These alerts can be audible or my preferred choice is e-mail once a set limit has been reached the programme will e-mail you to tell you you’re over or approaching your limit.
So remember sometimes the cheapest Internet deal isn’t the best if you are genuinely an occasional user then getting a package with a modest allowance should be fine. If however you like to view movies online and do a lot of social networking then a contract with no limit its obviously going to make more sense.
Robert Bartram (Network Manager)