So, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m looking at what sort of bandwidth is actually used when you take advantage of the many media offerings made available on the internet. For a little over two weeks, I’ve been monitoring my usage, and I think most of the bandwidth caps that are being floated by various ISPs are ludicrously low. This morning I hit roughly 30 gigs, which would extrapolate to about 60 gigs for a month. I have done the following:
- Watched The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, 30 Rock, and The Office on Hulu.com;
- Watched three movies and a bunch of television shows (probably six hour-long episodes) on Netflix;
- Listened to music via Pandora;
- Downloaded and seeded three Linux distros via Vuze;
- Conducted legal research; and
- General web-browsing.
Furthermore, for the past few days, I haven’t streamed much content because I’ve been busier than normal, so my numbers may actually be a little low for what would be my typical usage. In addition, these numbers don’t take into account the bandwidth used by other people in my household.
Which brings up an interesting question. If the ISPs are going to impose caps on users, and charge them for overages (sorta like cell-phone plans), are they also going to make it easy to find out what your bandwidth usage is? Can you log into your account and check your stats, or are you totally at their mercy as to the determinations of bandwidth?
