Gigs per Month for Average Web User

[illram]

Let's say you stream a movie every night on Netflix or the equivalent, play games online once a day, download the occasional CD now and then, and do daily internet browsing and emailing and such. What would you say the average gigs per month rate would be for that user?

I'm thinking about switching to comcast and wondering if I would ever, ever come anywhere near their 250 gb per month cap. I suspect I never would. True/false?

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Try using BitMeter for a month. It does measure all network activity, so if you transfer stuff to other computers, it picks that up too.

Your router may also be able to show logs for amount of data transferred to and from the local network.

From personal experience -- your current activity will probably not hit that limit. I consider this household a very heavy user of bandwidth, but even we barely go over 300GB per month, and thats only every couple of months.

 

[Mise]

Christ, 300GB per month? That's insane. No wonder the internets is running out of tubes.

You will almost certainly never hit the 250GB cap, Illram. I wish ISPs over here would give us that much......

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Christ, 300GB per month? That's insane. No wonder the internets is running out of tubes.

You will almost certainly never hit the 250GB cap, Illram. I wish ISPs over here would give us that much......

My dad works from home a lot. That accounts for a 3rd of the bandwidth at least. The rest is split between 4 people.

If it were 300GB a person sure, otherwise...

 

[Mise]

I see, 200 split 4 ways is probably about right for the internet generation.

 

[classical_hero]

We only get 30/30GB peak/offpeak over here. It sucks being Australian at times.

 

[Zelig]

Really tough to hit over 200gb/month unless you're downloading torrents like these:

 

[PeteAtoms]

Well there's not point in paying for bandwidth that you'd never use. Push comes to shove, go to Starbucks and use their wifi.

 

[civ_king]

I have AT&T, I'm not even sure if I have a cap, unless you heavily torrent you shouldn't get anywhere near that cap

 

[illram]

Thanks everyone!

@ civ_king: I've had AT&T for almost 10 years now (got it back when they were SBC Global) and I'm a little tired of how slow it is. I find my wife and I are often doing two bandwidth hogging things at once in the house, and that streaming HD content can be iffy.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Thanks everyone!

@ civ_king: I've had AT&T for almost 10 years now (got it back when they were SBC Global) and I'm a little tired of how slow it is. I find my wife and I are often doing two bandwidth hogging things at once in the house, and that streaming HD content can be iffy.

Yet we somehow manage to get 300 gigs a month on that slow connection.

I wouldnt go with comcast for purely moral reasons. Their ISP division is horrible, much worse than ATT's.

 

[illram]

Yet we somehow manage to get 300 gigs a month on that slow connection.

I wouldnt go with comcast for purely moral reasons. Their ISP division is horrible, much worse than ATT's.

I'm only doing this for speed and cost per month. I know both companies suck.

The advertised rate for my AT&T connection in my area is 1.5 mbps. (Or 3mbps? I forget). Either way, Comcast offers much higher speeds without a landline, for less money. I'd LOVE to pick someone else but the only other competitors are small DSL outfits that use AT&T's lines anyway.

I know there is a big difference between advertised and actual speeds, and I know the deal with comcast's "powerboost" BS, but local reviews on dslreports show that people are reporting much, much higher speeds than what I am currently getting.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Thats weird, ATT offers up to 6mbps on DSL here (Here being South Bay Area) And up to 24mbps if you go with U-VERSE.

 

[illram]

Yeah in the South Bay there are better DSL speeds for some reason. Probably newer lines/less antiquated system or something.

 

[civ_king]

I get 6 mega bits per second download, but some programs like steam download are more like 9

I'm in Vallejo so I'm in North Bay

 

[Zelig]

Seriously? I'm in a country larger than the US, with the same population as California, and we've got both 100 mbit home fibre and 100 mbit DOCSIS 3.0 available here.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Yeah, you're in Canada. Internet in the US sucks. You can get up to like 50/20 mbit fibre here, if its even offered in your area, but it costs about 120$ per month.

 

[Mise]

Same in the UK - we get near universal broadband coverage (up to 8 Mbps), and decent 20 Mbps service if you live in a city, but anything higher than that is prohibitively expensive. Not quite $120 for 50 Mbit... (£50 per month including free landline telephone calls) but unaffordable (and unavailable) to the vast majority of even hardcore internet users.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Id be happy if even 8mbit was available at a reasonable price. As it stands, with DSL, you can only get up to 6mbit and its about 50$ per month.

I dont mention cable because Id rather have slower DSL than sign up for Comcast.

 

[cardgame]

Comcast is evil.

That being said, unless you download stuff their bandwidth cap shouldn't be a problem. But I do believe that they spy on everything you download. And they're in league with the RIAA/MAFIAA - so be bloody careful.