Where does all my bandwidth go?
Q: I just need some help with why I’d be up to 80% of my Broadband use for the 2nd month in a row. What type of things use a lot? Today I’ve not used it … but it’s used 3%. All I’ve had open is my blog with me doing nothing and the local weather, which does update regularly – so that may do it.
Also, does uploading to my blog use much? Or does checking out other people’s blogs use much? That I do do a bit. Just let me know when you can so I can try to work out what to do.
And does Skype use much? …. or emails? .. hopefully last one – if I leave website open where the pictures are constantly changing – am i using up broadband?
A: The answer to all the above is that everything that comes to your screen from the internet has to be downloaded through your broadband pipe and counts against your download limit (unless you have some free services provided by your ISP.) The big question is how much.
A typical blog page can quite big, often containing big photos and video, and can be as large as 500Kb, while a fairly simple page like the weather will be as small as 50Kb. The problem is that if that weather page is reloaded every 5 minutes, that totals 600Kb/hr. Pages with pictures that change (like ads) are similarly high
Checking emails is probably only a few Kb every check (usually 5 minutes) plus the size of any emails downloaded. Skype is quite light for text, audio/video chat is approx 3-16Kb/sec.
Uploading things is quite different, and varies from ISP to ISP. Most ADSL ISPs do not charge anything for uploads, but I believe Bigpond, Optus & iiNet all count uploads towards the monthly cap
Tags: Customer Questions