Windows 7: A lot of bandwidth eaten with little browsing

Hello everyone,

From the past few weeks or so, I am on a limited data plan (10 GB per month).
When I browse the internet for an hour or two (usually Facebook, Twitter, Blogs and some forums), my data exchange for that session goes to around 700-800 MB. I'm pretty sure something is wrong with it. Simple browsing can't consume so much of data.

Can anyone suggest some solutions to tackle this problem? I have Windows Auto Update turned on, but I don't think that the updates would be so large. Earlier I was on an unlimited plan and so I never checked the amount of bandwidth used.

Another question is that my brother has recently opted for an EDGE plan and gets very low speeds. How can I help him increase his browsing speed? Even he doesn't downloads much but is a heavy internet browser and is extremely irritated with the slow speeds he gets.

Any help will be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Regards,
Abhishek Sharma

What is your connection speed?

The speed that my current plan offers me is around 4-6 mbps.

If you need something to monitor your usage this may help. Bandwidth monitor, bandwidth speed test, bandwidth and traffic monitoring tool for Windows

I'll install it and see whether it helps the purpose or not. Any other solution?

Networx is great for monitoring overall quotas though you can install NetBalancer (free version) which will enable you to scrutinize individual applications. The free version allows you to set up to 3 application restrictions (you can swap these as you go along) and so drill down on how much bandwidth individual applications are using.

HowToGeek has a detailed tutorial about installing and getting the best from NetBalancer, which I recommend you to follow.

If you are using Firefox I suggest you download Chrome and monitor what happens (with NetBalancer) when you perform very similar browsing sessions. Say an hour with each browser spending the same amount of time surfing the same sites, at different intervals of the day for both.

I've seen this happen with Firefox though mainly when surfing video sites like YouTube. When you only part watch a video, and then jump to another, and so on.

This most likely doesnt affect you: but one of our national ISP's have recently been informed their broadband meter has been over-counting usage. This had been confirmed by an independent investigation. The ISP has since rectified the error and are identifying effected customers to offer compensation. I can only speculate it would be a month free on whichever plan the customer is on.

This probably does affect you: HD flash advertising banners.
They've made the simple banner ads into high def video's. I've timed one at 65seconds for a single loop.
In perspective, Its like watching a one minute video on youtube every time you visit, or refresh a page.

Depending on which browser you use, you should be able to block content from certain websites.
Finding out which websites the ads are actually hosted on is another problem, if you dont know/understand html, viewing source, or inspect element.

I was just coming back to this thread to add similar regarding live feed ads. You could try using a flash/script blocker to enable content on the fly, and see if the usage drops-down?

What I've found is that at any given time different versions of different browsers have suffered with this issue, and I've not come across any certain solution. Switching browsers might well be a interim option.

Also if you install NetBalancer- see what your AV is doing? I've come across similar circumstances where the browser stops 'downloading', yet the AV is still scanning the content?

1st off 4 - 6 mbps is slow. 2nd, run command prompt and type in netstat -b
That command will show you all connections and possible apps that might be using a tcp connection.
usually things are in startup that require updates or constant connection(s) to the interwebz.

Hi there
It seems really weird that with better and better technology ISP providers are getting greader and greedier in their Bandwidth allocation -- there's NO point in having say a fast 20 Mb download bit rate if your basic package is say 1 GB a month and you even THINK about using services like WEB TV (Sky player / BBC iPlayer or similar sort of services).

Any sort of VIDEO - especially at "Viewable quality" uses HUGE amounts of bandwidth -- I was in a hotel the other evening and watched a repeat of BBC's "The Apprentice" on my computer -- it was nearly 1 GB after 55 mins.

These days with high quality video you need to try and get an "uncapped" plan.

As for your colleague with low speed -- his only solution would be to switch ISP providers or go for a reasonable "Dongle" type thing from a mobile phone co -- these mobile broadband providers usually work passably well at around 2MB.

Cheers
jimbo