Internet data caps

[CiaranM246]

i am about to purchase an upgrade for my internet, but it is data capped and this is the first time i have dealt with a data cap, it is 20gb a day (600gb a month) i dont know if this is enough or not? it is a house with 4 people all of whom would stream quite often and one who is a heavy gamer, and youtube is used alot , is it enough?

 

[thor220]

20gb is probably not enough on days where multiple people are home watching videos and / or surfing the web. It's not really worth upgrading the speed if you are just going to run into the cap.

 

[SBMfromLA]

Just to give you a heads up... I have an unlimited data with Time Warner... BUT on my Android phone I notice with all the apps I have installed, my phone eats up about 100-200MB of data each week... and that's just the background jobs.

What I recommend you to do is.. should you decide to get this... pay very close attention to your internet usage. In fact, your ISP should either have an app or website that you could log on too to view your up-2-date usages. Then you will get a rough idea of how much data your household uses per month.

 

[CiaranM246]

20gb is probably not enough on days where multiple people are home watching videos and / or surfing the web. It's not really worth upgrading the speed if you are just going to run into the cap.

Ok i see, so i suppose that monitoring my data would be a good idea... how do i do this and with what programme?

 

[thor220]

20gb is probably not enough on days where multiple people are home watching videos and / or surfing the web. It's not really worth upgrading the speed if you are just going to run into the cap.

Ok i see, so i suppose that monitoring my data would be a good idea... how do i do this and with what programme?

Your ISP should provide a website you can go to that tells you how much data you are using. You can call them up and ask if you don't know it.

 

[bill001g]

The simple but still pretty stupid monitor is the resource monitor built into windows. It will give you the rates in bits/sec of which you just need to multiply by 450 to get rate/hour in bytes.

Games use very little a couple hundred megbytes/hour. Netlix watching HD can easily use over 2gbyte/hour. Of course I am sure you know there are games that are over 20gb downloads so those can wipe your cap in a couple hours if you can get good transfer rates.

 

[thor220]

The simple but still pretty stupid monitor is the resource monitor built into windows. It will give you the rates in bits/sec of which you just need to multiply by 450 to get rate/hour in bytes.

Games use very little a couple hundred megbytes/hour. Netlix watching HD can easily use over 2gbyte/hour. Of course I am sure you know there are games that are over 20gb downloads so those can wipe your cap in a couple hours if you can get good transfer rates.

That will only get the data usage for his PC. It does not include any other device, of which there are many with 4 people in the house.

 

[CiaranM246]

20gb is probably not enough on days where multiple people are home watching videos and / or surfing the web. It's not really worth upgrading the speed if you are just going to run into the cap.

Ok i see, so i suppose that monitoring my data would be a good idea... how do i do this and with what programme?

Your ISP should provide a website you can go to that tells you how much data you are using. You can call them up and ask if you don't know it.

nope my isp does not have a website displaying this information, i was looking for some third party firmware for my router but could not find any (tenda n300)

 

[CiaranM246]

are there any programmes that i can install on my pc that will record all data from everyone on the network? or does it have to be at the router?

 

[bill001g]

The simple but still pretty stupid monitor is the resource monitor built into windows. It will give you the rates in bits/sec of which you just need to multiply by 450 to get rate/hour in bytes.

Games use very little a couple hundred megbytes/hour. Netlix watching HD can easily use over 2gbyte/hour. Of course I am sure you know there are games that are over 20gb downloads so those can wipe your cap in a couple hours if you can get good transfer rates.

That will only get the data usage for his PC. It does not include any other device, of which there are many with 4 people in the house.

Of course it won't you have to run it on each device. I just did not want to go into the complexity of recommending loading third party firmware into the router so the router could collect it.

Your assumption that his ISP has some magic web page that can give him the information is just as invalid.

 

[thor220]

The simple but still pretty stupid monitor is the resource monitor built into windows. It will give you the rates in bits/sec of which you just need to multiply by 450 to get rate/hour in bytes.

Games use very little a couple hundred megbytes/hour. Netlix watching HD can easily use over 2gbyte/hour. Of course I am sure you know there are games that are over 20gb downloads so those can wipe your cap in a couple hours if you can get good transfer rates.

That will only get the data usage for his PC. It does not include any other device, of which there are many with 4 people in the house.

Of course it won't you have to run it on each device. I just did not want to go into the complexity of recommending loading third party firmware into the router so the router could collect it.

Your assumption that his ISP has some magic web page that can give him the information is just as invalid.

I'm sorry to say this because you obviously woke up on the wrong side of the bed but most ISPs are legally required to have a "magic" webpage that tells you your usage. ISPs are a utility in the united states and even if they weren't a company cannot not tell you what they are billing you for. Here is one such example

http://usagemeterapp.comcast.net/

and even further proof that it is common for ISPs to have these "magic" webpages

http://lifehacker.com/5917367/how-can-i-find-out-how-much-bandwidth-im-using-at-home

Please don't get mad at me because you open your mouth without fact checking.


Back to the OP

There aren't any apps that can reliably measure the entire network's data usage from a single PC. It's either through the router, your ISP, or not at all.