Internet Usage

[Big Dave2]

Could I really be using all my internet usage of 150 GB / month?

There are 3 of us in the house.

My son uses the most internet with online gaming and watching youtube videos and occasionally netflix. He goes to school during the day so he is only doing these things in the evening after his homework until 10:00 pm and then more on the weekends. Oh yeah sometimes I've seen him doing facetime with friends or streaming music while he games online.

My wife watches a movie on Netflix on occasion and may stream music on her ipod while she showers but that's it. She is not into computers or technology.

I work from home quite a bit so I am on the internet on a laptop computer every day but I am mostly emailing and working on websites. I rarely watch a video or download anything. I rarely watch Netflix.

We do have 2 android cell phones that connect to the wifi while we are in the house and use wifi calling while connected. We don't talk on the phone much so I'm not sure if that would have anything to do with it.

Does this sound like we should be going over our allotment of 150 GB/Month? This just started being an issue about 5 or 6 months ago and I can't put my finger on anything we are doing that should be causing it.

[Lowblazah]

Yep...easily. and I bet your son is responsible for over 75% of it.

[leech~~]

Yep...easily. and I bet your son is responsible for over 75% of it.

I think Dave gets lost in time and how much time he spends on this site debating people all day. Poor son getting blamed, again!

[Lowblazah]

LOL! I didnt even think of that! Sorry "Dave's son".

[DTro]

5hrs streaming video is 10GB

[Big Dave2]

I think Dave gets lost in time and how much time he spends on this site debating people all day. Poor son getting blamed, again!

Says the guy who has been registered on this site 6 years less than me but has more posts than me.

[Big Dave2]

Thanks Andrew and Darren, Sounds like the internet usage is legit so I'm just going to upgrade my plan to the next tier. It also comes with faster download speeds which will be fine by me also.

[bobbymalone]

How old is your son?

Maybe he just figured out there are videos of nekkid ladies on the internet, or so I have been told.

[Big Dave2]

How old is your son?

Maybe he just figured out there are videos of nekkid ladies on the internet, or so I have been told.

There are?

[bobbymalone]

pubescent boys have it so easy these days. scrambled cinemax and a tattered VS catalog I intercepted from the mail were all I had until I discovered a stash of classic literature in my dad's closet.

[icehole10]

pubescent boys have it so easy these days. scrambled cinemax and a tattered VS catalog I intercepted from the mail were all I had until I discovered a stash of classic literature in my dad's closet.

+1 I was just telling one of my buddies that the other day. Used to have to stay up late on certain nights just to catch a Showtime afterhours movie, which were never any good except the occasional love scene! Kids these days just don't know how easy they have it now days!!

[leech~~]

Says the guy who has been registered on this site 6 years less than me but has more posts than me.

Lol, you win this round Dave!

[Sandmannd]

You have a limit on your usage on your home internet? If so what you said is available is nothing now days. I didn't know there were still plans out there with limits. I would upgrade it so you don't get charged for excess.

[Big Dave2]

+1 I was just telling one of my buddies that the other day. Used to have to stay up late on certain nights just to catch a Showtime afterhours movie, which were never any good except the occasional love scene! Kids these days just don't know how easy they have it now days!!

Heck, you don't know how good YOU had it! When I was that age I had never even heard of Showtime (if it even existed yet) and the best I could hope for with late night TV was some cleavage on Benny Hill. (Assuming the antenna on the roof hadn't blown around and the channel came in clear).

[Big Dave2]

You have a limit on your usage on your home internet? If so what you said is available is nothing now days. I didn't know there were still plans out there with limits. I would upgrade it so you don't get charged for excess.

Yes, all the Mediacom plans have a cap of some sort. Each tier you go up adds speed and capacity. I just updated to the second tier to try it out and see if it is enough. Only $5.00/month extra but that's on top of a bill that's already double what it's worth to me.

[aanderud]

Just one other variable -- there are things out there like Roku devices that actually pull more video than you think you're pulling. I haven't noticed this (just got my Roku) but my buddy did since he started looking at how they were using 600 gigs per month.

His kids will watch like 1 episode of sesame street show using the pbs kids app on the Roku, and then they'll turn off the TV (but won't turn off the Roku). The Roku doesn't know the TV is off, so it just sits in the background auto-playing the next 5 episodes or so even though nobody's watching. So, there's something to consider. I think netflix on my firetv stick and roku will both auto-play the next episode of 'whatever I'm watching', without me pressing a button, so there's huge potential for some crazy amounts of data to be consumed while your TV is off. There's usually an option to tell it NOT to auto-play, but the default is probably auto-play.

He has mediacomm in Waterloo, IA. I think he just upgraded to the 999 gigabyte plan that has like 100 Mbps of download....not because he needed 100 Mbps of download, but because he needed the cap raised to that insane level to avoid streaming over it.

[Big Dave2]

He has mediacomm in Waterloo, IA. I think he just upgraded to the 999 gigabyte plan that has like 100 Mbps of download....not because he needed 100 Mbps of download, but because he needed the cap raised to that insane level to avoid streaming over it.

Wow, I guess I'm no where near that. I upgraded to the 250 GB of usage and 15 MB of speed.

[PurpleFloyd]

I think Dave gets lost in time and how much time he spends on this site debating people all day. Poor son getting blamed, again!

[jmd1]

My son told me his viewing the other sites was part of his educational experience and that is why he was looking at the neked girls while doing homework. Sounded reasonable to me! But this is the same kid that told me after wrecking his car by slamming the curb on a 90 degree turn that the post speed limit sign for the curve was only a suggested speed limit. Guess i should have had a talk with him.

[mainbutter]

Video streaming is probably 90% of your data usage, give or take 9.999% in either direction. I remember back in college I was limited to 16 gigs/month living in the dorms. The horrors of limited data.

Some data thieves that you may not be aware of, that has bitten some people in the rear end:

- Automated backup/uploading

- One-time downloading of extremely large files/programs

I read an article about a guy who had a new computer, backed up his files to cloud storage, and didn't think about the fact that he was uploading a terrabyte of saved photos. He let the uploading run overnight, but his ISP charged him some ridiculous amount of $ for exceeding his data (and of course they charge per MB).

I only use unlimited data plans for home use. Mobile data plans I cheap out on, and use wifi at home for major downloads, on-the-go internet is just for basic communication and NOT for streaming video/audio nonstop everywhere I go.

[aanderud]

V

I only use unlimited data plans for home use.

Hard to find unlimited data plans for home use any more. Almost all providers have provisions to either throttle or cut your service if you're deemed to be using what they consider to be excessive amounts of data.

Centurylink, Mediacomm, and Comcast all have fairly explicitly defined limits, and some other vendors have very vague policies about what is "excessive" amounts of traffic.

[Big Dave2]

we still went over our limit this month even though we upgraded. I think we watched a lot of Netflix this month so I found something that might help.

Quote:

Adjust your data usage settings

Adjusting the data usage settings for your account is the easiest way to reduce the amount of bandwidth used while watching Netflix. There are 4 data usage settings to choose from, each estimate below is per stream:

Low (0.3 GB per hour)

Medium (SD: 0.7 GB per hour)

High (best video quality, up to 3 GB per hour for HD, 7 GB per hour for Ultra HD)

Auto (adjusts automatically to deliver the highest possible quality, based on your current internet connection speed)

To select a setting that works best for your Internet plan, navigate to Your Account page and click Playback settings in the Your Profile section. It can take up to 8 hours for these changes to take affect. Restricting data usage may affect video quality while watching Netflix.

All of our accounts were set on Auto (the default setting) which with my faster internet was probably delivering high quality on every movie watched. I switched all accounts over to medium without telling anyone to see if anyone notices the difference in quality.

[nofishfisherman]

Not sure if it was mentioned but it might be worth checking to confirm that you have your wifi protected. If not you may have a neighbor or 6 piggy backing off your wifi. If you confirm its on lock down it might not hurt to change the password just in case someone guessed correctly and has been able to piggy back off your wifi.

[upnorth]

You can also log on to your router and look at the device table. I will tell you how many and what devices are on the local network.

[Big Dave2]

I looked at out Netflix usage for this month and we watched 21 different things! With the data usage setting on Auto and our new faster internet, I'm guessing most of those movies were being delivered at either 3 or 7 GB per hour. Throw in music streaming, you tube videos, video gaming and internet surfing and I can see now how it can add up.

Anything is possible but I doubt anyone is stealing my internet because

1. My last password was a bunch of random numbers and letters that even I never remembered

2. I just got a new router less than a month ago so I have a brand new password.

3. My old router didn't work more than about 10 feet from my house. Not sure yet the range of my new one.