for those of U on ntl broadband

[chris French]

I know, but I always seem to end up being more befuddled than before

A fixed IP address would be handy, to save messing with Dynamic DNS, and I don't want to tie in to a 12 month contract.

>

[Harvey Van Sickle]

On 10 Mar 2005, T i m wrote

This has to do with the 750/now 2MB service. (The 3GB/month limit on the 300/now 1MB service is clearly designed to encourage lower-speed- but-higher-bandwidth users to pay more in line with what the amount of data they're transferring.)

Context: I've been on ntl's "512/became 600/then 750/now 2MB" service for over 4 years now, and have always been happy with it. The best bit was the "always on", but one of the major attractions (having come from dial-up) was not having to worry about what I downloaded (size/time/cost).

Magic. So I was concerned when they first brought in the 1GB/day "unenforced unless you hit it too often" cap. But I had *no idea* what my usage was (that was the great thing about it), so about a year ago, I started measuring my usage.

(It's pointless to try and talk about "average use": that's the whole point of having broadband -- you do with it what suits you. But for context, my usage is that I work from home and am in front of the computer for between 4 and 10 hours a day; I do a lot of web-based research (archival maps and stuff), and I maintain my own ocmputer. So I download what I want, when I want; I listen to streaming radio (between 1 and 5 hours a day); I update programs; I download software to try it out and/or discard it; I upload files to the office a couple of times a week (around 10-15 MB per file); and very occasionally -- every couple of months or so -- I might do a big download of something like a Linux ISO image (a CD-worth of data). I don't do games, and I don't do file-sharing.)

Measuring that sort of usage over the past year, I have used over 3 GB

-- *per month* -- just once (a Linux month). All the other months have been between 1.8 and 2.3 GB. That's per *month*.

In my experience, it takes a hell of a lot of file transferring to hit

1 GB per day; if people are actually hitting that sort of figure on a regular basis, they should be paying more for the amount of 1s and 0s they're shifting through the cables.

[T i m]

I would suggest your useage isn't untypical for a PC interested (rather than someone 'who just want's it for word and emails') person.

I installed Netmeter on 2 of the 3 PC's here last night but this morning it thinks the total traffic to date is 9M? I downloaded 3 x

10M files last night?

Anyone know if NM is accurate or if there are conditions that can confuse it?

All the best ..

T i m

[Harvey Van Sickle]

On 11 Mar 2005, T i m wrote

-snip usage explanation-

I know it can be confused if you're downloading from more than one computer -- it's computer-based rather than router-based, I think -- but apart from that, it's always looked accurate to me.

[Lobster]

Is that the cumulative total on 2 PCs, ie can you just add up the figures recorded on 2 PCs sharing a connection?

As an NTL 750K'er I'm affected by this speed/capping thing too, so I think I need to install this Netmeter to evaluate my family's usage. But can anyone tell me where to download a kosher version of the correct software? I hate looking for 'named' software via search engines at the best of times - you never know what nasties you might end up with - but in particular, there is clearly more than one program out there named 'Netmeter'.

David

[tony sayer]

One of their service people told me a while ago that they have "some" uses who are running servers etc on a 24/7 basis and are taking up more than what the great majority of their customers do, hence the capping.

However I think this is the way its going to go in the industry witness the use as much as you can, and capped services at different prices now appearing in the market.

For me 3 GB a month is probably more than what I actually use and as that amounts to a 100 MB a day thats quite a bit, and I don't think most users are going to clock up that amount every day. Still if they are ntl cater for them too, as do others, it'll just cost them more.

It seems at last that ntl are waking up to the fact that the market is becoming more competitive and that a lot more people have access to the BT line to carry ADSL than what have access to cable networks!....

[David Hearn]

That's good to know.

I probably do most my downloading at work during the day. During the evenings I use my PC lesss - but if I did use it, it would be for things like emailing/newsgroups/sending photos to family, used to spend lots of time doing CounterStrike - which I may do sometimes. Steam updates automatically, so I get the Half Life 2 updates often (which can be sizeable). As I have a work laptop, I often take that home (work from home once a week) and this also has Steam on it, so potentially, double the updates - although I can get them done at work. So far I think that 100M a day average (actually 3GB a month, rather than a daily limit) is probably okay - but its just knowing whether my usage will change in the future.

I'll give it a month or so and see what my usage is over that - and then if its like 1.5GB or less, I'll upgrade. If I'm over 2GB I'll probably check for another month. If I'm over 3GB, I'll stick with it for now.

David

[Harvey Van Sickle]

On 11 Mar 2005, Lobster wrote

-snip-

This is the one you want:

[T i m]

Yep, this was just on the one PC ... it seems to be working a bit more realistically today .. I just need to keep an eye on it ;-)

All the best ..

T i m

[T i m]

You should be able to just add them all together at the end of the month. And if it has to include the LAN traffic then at least you will be underestimating the figures.

If you were able to fit a second network card to all the PC and create two 'networks' (one LAN and the other connected to the WAN) and have Netmeter monitor the WAN port? I suppose router with decent stats would be cheaper (any suggestions anyone?)

All the best ..

T i m