Internet usage.

[Kittyhawk]

Since I'm old, boring and predictable my daily internet usage never varied by more than a few mb. Recently I changed providers and noticed a marked increase in daily mb usage. Do different internet service providers have different ways of calculating this?

 

[Sideways]

Sometimes a change of ISP coincides with an upgrade to browser or to spam / filtering services.
Could your settings have changed somehow such that videos or web pages are auto loading in the background in case you want to view them ? Or internet sites are being checked against the ISP's blacklist before you are connected to them. These might create extra traffic.
Your browser might be doing this without you ever actually viewing any of it.
It's worthwhile periodically going top to bottom through the browser settings as I'm convinced that they can get changed during updates. Sometimes "reasonably" because of feature enhancements.
I habitually set my browser tracking, security and advertising related options to leave as small a footprint as possible and occasionally find some have (autonomously) turned back on again.

 

[clogs]

sideway's, master of IT.........
suppose like many, mines on standby so easy click n go.......
no idea how to check that stuff........
as long as it works when I start it up I dont care......wish I knew more.......
to late to be of interest at 74......
pain in the buttocks if we have a power cut....coz it take ages to crank up....soggy c/flakes.....
no idea what most of the buttons do other than the alphabet......

Kitty hawk....
I'm so predictable in useage.....mind, found a few good things on utube....
trouble is it's so easy to sit on ur bum and just watch another one.....hahaha....

 

[Kittyhawk]

Well I dunno...
I've read all I could but it's all gobbledegook to me. As far as I can understand it's something to do with 'packets'. And, subject to correction from folks who know about this stuff, packets are dollops of information that make up whatever is being downloaded, and different ISP's count packets in different ways.
We have a TV connected to the internet and the child bride has one program of an hour' duration that she watches once a week. The program used to eat 1.2gb with my old ISP, now with the new one it uses 1.8gb. We used to get by on a 60gb/ month plan but won't do that now. Not happy!

 

[paulrbarnard]

Well I dunno...
I've read all I could but it's all gobbledegook to me. As far as I can understand it's something to do with 'packets'. And, subject to correction from folks who know about this stuff, packets are dollops of information that make up whatever is being downloaded, and different ISP's count packets in different ways.
We have a TV connected to the internet and the child bride has one program of an hour' duration that she watches once a week. The program used to eat 1.2gb with my old ISP, now with the new one it uses 1.8gb. We used to get by on a 60gb/ month plan but won't do that now. Not happy!

Easiest way to think about it is like a letter. The information you want is written on a page. That’s the content. You put the content in an envelope and that’s your package. You also write the address on the envelope to get it where it needs to be. Some providers only count the information you’ve written on the page, some count the blank space on the page as well even if you haven’t written on it. Others then count the envelope too and some will then count the address as well.

 

[artie]

Since I'm old, boring and predictable my daily internet usage never varied by more than a few mb. Recently I changed providers and noticed a marked increase in daily mb usage. Do different internet service providers have different ways of calculating this?

Does it matter?
Are you paying by the MB?
For as long as I remember, I've been paying a monthly fee and use as much as I want.

 

[Richard_C]

Nice explanation Paul Barnard.

I'm not sure about uploads, do ISPs count that in? Our phones backup photos etc. to onedrive, set to WiFi only, so as soon as we get back from a trip it all gets busy.


We used to have a 60gb account a long time ago. With 4 people in the house, 2 of them 17/18 year olds and lots of devices, laptops, phones, ipads etc the regular monthly system updates used a fair chunk. I think one month we used almost 40gb when Windows 8 arrived and I wasn't here to roll out a centralised upgrade from one download. Now we just pay for unlimited and I don't even monitor. We use cloud storage (one drive) a lot more toonow that laptops have smaller solid state hard drives.

 

[Windows]

Many video services use adaptive bit rates which means that you’ll get better quality video (at the cost of more data downloaded) if you get a faster connection. That could explain why you see an increase in video data being used simply by switching ISP. Some video services provide settings to allow you to limit the quality/size of the video you’re getting.

 

[Spectric]

I personally don't put any of my data in, on or near a cloud because I just don't trust them on the basis of security or data retention. I still have not worked out why they call them clouds because at the end of the day they are a hardware based server somewhere and don't float around but maybe just like a real cloud they can leak data ! For me sound digital asset management is having regular backups on physical devices that I own and can handle, plus some securely outside of the property.

 

[paulrbarnard]

I personally don't put any of my data in, on or near a cloud because I just don't trust them on the basis of security or data retention. I still have not worked out why they call them clouds because at the end of the day they are a hardware based server somewhere and don't float around but maybe just like a real cloud they can leak data ! For me sound digital asset management is having regular backups on physical devices that I own and can handle, plus some securely outside of the property.

I keep all my data locally. I simply don’t trust the cloud provider to keep providing the service. I’ve had a couple of instances where a cloud service was shut down by the company. Apple shut down .Mac many years ago without a replacement strategy. That was a night mare as all my images were there at the time. There have been others that started free then started charging and pushing up the price annually.
I have my own cloud server (OwnCloud) at home and everything lives there.

 

[selectortone]

I personally don't put any of my data in, on or near a cloud

What, you mean uploading all your precious data that you've accumulated over decades, via your hugely reliable service provider to some unknown data centre, or centres, thousands of miles away and trusting it will be totally safe and be available for you 24x7 forever in the future? And not bother to make a local backup? What could possibly go wrong?

 

[DrPhill]

I once explained the cloud to my Mum, who was technically illiterate.
Where is it stored? - you don't know.
Who owns the machine that it is on? - you don't know.
How safe is it? - they tell you it is safe.
How do I know that I can get it back when I need it? - they tell you that you can.
Why would I want to do that then?

You can tell she knew nothing about modern computing......

 

[Richard_C]

Let's have an anti cloud rant then. Let's not. Cloud is part of a very sound 3 part strategy, the originating device, NAS or similar, reliable paid for cloud storage. Chances of all 3 failing at the same time are remote. If your house burns down or floods, what's left? If you see interviews with people who have been flooded or forest-fired, they often say... We've lost all the photos, all the.memories. Does anyone have the self-discipline to take a physical device to an off site location each day? Why not make use of all available technology? Very sensitive data can always be saved as an encrypted file.

Oh dear, smoke, house on fire. Backup server will be OK though, it's upstairs.

 

[Spectric]

If your house burns down or floods, what's left?

is having regular backups on physical devices that I own and can handle, plus some securely outside of the property.

People are very relaxed when it comes to their digital data, they just hand it over to a stranger to look after, I doubt many would do the same with there bank and financial details. If you have programs that you have spent months writing and debugging or a book / document then this should be treated the same as if it was money in your bank account because time is money and so is the knowledge you put into your work.

To many people put far to much trust in technology and with no recovery plan, I have seen people very distressed when there Pc has just crashed with the blue screen and all there work is on that one machine and sometimes it can be recovered if they have it on a work drive but often if it is on the same drive as the OS then it could be goodbye unless you send the drive off.

 

[Sachakins]

1) Encrypted back up to two srperate cloud services every 12 hours.
2) Encrypted backup to an external usb Sata drive daily, stored in seperate fire proof safe.
3) hourly back up tp second hard drive within pc, not the OS DRIVE.
4) Hourly auto backup to OS drive, but seperate partition,
5) 12 hourly auto create restore point

Yes it's overkill, but depends on what you use the pc for.
If all you do is surf net and and odd email, then a daily backup anyway other than the OS drive sufficient.
Tons of photos and memories, auto upload to two seperate cloud servers, set to upload when new images loaded., weekly backup additions to removable media.

If you use it heavily, loads of video editing, designing, valuable and sensitive development work. The 1 to 5 above is a minimum.

So in the end it has to be based on how much you value what you do on the device.

 

[paulrbarnard]

Let's have an anti cloud rant then. Let's not. Cloud is part of a very sound 3 part strategy, the originating device, NAS or similar, reliable paid for cloud storage. Chances of all 3 failing at the same time are remote. If your house burns down or floods, what's left? If you see interviews with people who have been flooded or forest-fired, they often say... We've lost all the photos, all the.memories. Does anyone have the self-discipline to take a physical device to an off site location each day? Why not make use of all available technology? Very sensitive data can always be saved as an encrypted file.

Oh dear, smoke, house on fire. Backup server will be OK though, it's upstairs.

Mine is in a separate building…

 

[Kittyhawk]

Does it matter?
Are you paying by the MB?
For as long as I remember, I've been paying a monthly fee and use as much as I want.

I used to be on a 60gb/month plan. Our monthly usage was 50-55gb. The plan from the new ISP is also 60gb/month but it looks like we will need 100gb/month plus for the same internet usage.
So there are I think two possible reasons for this.
(1) As clearly explained by paulrbarnard, there are different ways that ISPs can calculate usage and
(2) our old system was via a wireless modem, home based and connecting to the internet through a single designated local cell tower. Our new system is also via a wireless modem but designed for people at home and also on the move in boats, motorhomes etc so it connects to the internet through the nearest available cell tower. It's also meant to have enhanced signal reception for use in poor signal strength areas. Thus far we have only used it at home where we note a big increase in GB usage.
So, is our increased usage due to our new ISP calculating our gb consumption in a different way or is it something to do with the new modem having multi cell tower connectivity. Too hard for me..
Logically I should pose the question to the service providers but there is a problem with that. The help desks are located offshore and staffed by people for whom English is a second language. Combine that with the fact that I am deaf and the end result is that I have no idea what they are talking about.

Correction: just very hard of hearing, not totally deaf except when I want to be.

 

[artie]

I used to be on a 60gb/month pla.......

I think I get it.

The router picks up the 4g signal and then you connect your PC, Laptop or phone to the router either by ethernet cable or wifi?

 

[Kittyhawk]

I think I get it.

The router picks up the 4g signal and then you connect your PC, Laptop or phone to the router either by ethernet cable or wifi?

Correct. Connection of devices to the router/modem is via wifi.

An update.
Just the facts, no opinions.
Both my present and previous ISPs have excellent user sites where you can track the usage minute by minute - this is how I know that mb download is hugely increased with my present supplier compared to the old. We have a 60gb/ month plan, same as before, which just covered our usage but not with the new ISP. We could spend another $10/ month and upgrade to a 300gb/month but I don't want to - I'm scared I would fritter away my time with all those extra gb's and become an internet junkie.
So, overcoming the reluctance issues with my hearing and language I phoned the help desk. The techie on the other end assured me everything was in order, working as it should blah blah. I felt I was going to get fobbed off so started talking about packets, letters, envelopes etc as per Paul Barnard's excellent prior post, hoping very much that the fellow on the other end would not realize the extent of my ignorance. There was a subtle change from him and I think I heard something like keystrokes in the background..
But after the phone call my mb usage is completely in line with what it was from my previous ISP.