Social Networking and Peak-Time usage - help needed

Pinkeyes

Pinkeyes

Pinkeyes

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Greater Manchester
Hello

Got a bit of an issue with my internet connection at the moment.

My step daughter only uses the internet from about 4pm onwards every night.
Unfortunately this is the "peak time" for Plus Net, who monitor all traffic at this time.

Web traffic from 4pm till midnight has cranked up over 9 GB this month alone, and we are not at the end of it yet.

When you add that to the online gaming I do and other bits, we have gone over 13 GB (we are allowed 20GB) but to "help" us not go over our allowance, Plusnet start to cripple your connection (they do it again at 17GB). It has happened once before, and online gaming became unplayable (constant high pings, disconnects etc)

8GB seems pretty high for surfing.... but the ONLY sites she uses are social networking sites and youtube. Both of which I admit will be causing this issue.

How can I stop this from happening ? Ideally I still wanted her to be able to do what she wants, but somehow cache what she gets so re-visiting pages she has already been on doesn't require further downloading.

Although am I right in saying these pages tend to reload every time you visit ?
I notice if I go to a youtube page. Close it and re-open it, it downloads the video again...

Any help or suggestions would be really appreciated.
 
change your ISP

this sort of restriction on your usage is fine if your an old dear who connects to e-mail once a week.

For proper internet uses playing games, using social networking sites daily and downloading movies etc.. its just not suitable

Change to somebody without these sort of limits. Put your postcode up and we can help you find what else is out there

If you're still tied into 10 months of 12 month contract or similar

May we suggest DU meter. will record how much useage you've used this month so you can keep track of it. And stop watching stuff on youtube. Its videos that eat the bandwith. Youtube is blocked on our work internet for this very reason.
 
Hi

Thanks for the reply.

As you suggested, I am in fact tied into an annual contract.
The 20 GB limit has only been an issue once before, and only because I forgot to limit a torrent client which was my own fault.

The thing I do like about them is they only put a restriction on between these hours. From midnight to 4pm, you can download and do what you like. Which I take advantage of.

I like the idea of DU Meter. Is there a free one which allows you to monitor other machines on your network. I know Netlimiter 2 can do this, and will buy it if there is no freeware alternative .
Would be better if I could do the monitoring from my PC than start explaining bits and bytes to her, and as it is a teenage bedroom, avoiding going in there is also very important !
 
the free ones arent likely to provide remote monitoring and feedback to another PC

think there is a free trial of DU meter though. Give it a try, if your going to be in this contract a while, the £24 for up to 5 PCs could be worth it.
 
install adblock plus with the 'easylist' subscription on firefox

will block all ads, each page visit will have far less traffic then :) and will be faster
 
Got DU Meter trial - thanks MrLOL

That's not a bad idea Bledd. I will give it a go.

Had a chat with her last night. It seems most of the YouTube traffic is repeated viewing of songs until she gets bored of them. I am going to suggest the Firefox extensions that allow you to grab the movie and show her how to watch it in VLC until she wants to delete it and move on to someone else.

I was quite shocked really how easy it is to rack up the downloads.

If a Youtube video is 15 megs, and she watches 15 a night, thats 225 MB, if thats done every night in a month, thats 7 GB !! :eek:

So it looks like Youtube is the main culprit...
 
Dave L said:
13GB through web surfing??

I don't think so! Someone is doing some hefty downloading I reckon.
Click to expand...

Well Plusnet supply me with a breakdown of all internet traffic they handle, both for peak times and off peak.

Any downloading I do, I schedule for midnight onwards. Usually using programs in built traffic limiting. Works very well.

The 13 GB is made up primarily of web traffic, and the online gaming I do, which again builds pretty quickly too.

As I said earlier, "If a Youtube video is 15 megs, and she watches 15 a night, thats 225 MB, if thats done every night in a month, thats 7 GB"
And that's only very rough estimate. Some nights she is on her PC for hours on end... she uses it as a jukebox, so if you think about how many songs you can listen to in a night....
 
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