First of all, http://www.broadband.org/usage_calculator.html is a useful link that might help you answer my question. All I really want to know is whether I'd end up exceeding the monthly 40gb download limit with the following:

 

Total hours surfing the net per week: gonna say ~56 to be safe (most of this will be runescape/youtube/facebook)

Emails: Barely any

Music/films downloaded per month: None, I stream everything.

Videos watched per week: Not sure if this would include youtube, if not, perhaps ~10 hours per week, if so, more like 30 hours per week.

Online radio per week: None but I do use spotify for perhaps 35 hours per week.

Hours gaming per week: ~40 but that's runescape so i don't know how much less bandwidth that would use than the typical game the calculator is considering.

 

Extra: I might look through 500-1000 pictures per week on facebook.

Also, my brother is very similar but with more hours gaming and less streaming vids/music. He also uses a program similar to ventrillo for perhaps 50 hours per week, does that use alot of bandwidth?

 

I'm sorry if it seems like I'm being lazy and not using the calculator myself, I have done but I'm just not sure of a few main things:

 

How much bandwidth runescape uses compared to typical online games

How much bandwidth youtube/spotify use

How much bandwidth programs like ventrillo/teamspeak use

 

Sorry for the long and perhaps slightly confusing post, thanks in advance :)

Sounds ok, I flat with 5 guys and we have 40 gigs for all of us, which lasts. We usually have a bit left over and do some downloading near the end of the month.

40gb is a fair amount - with only two people using it you'd need to be doing some serious torrenting or youtubing to hit that limit.

1: RuneScape and online games in general don't use that much. My upload speed is 45kB/s and I can support 5 players in a game, just to give you an example. You'd be looking at it using 5-10kB/s of bandwidth maximum.

 

2: YouTube uses less than people like to think it does but as long as you aren't watching HD, I doubt you'd rack up that much unless you're watching really long videos all the time. Spotify's usage is probably about the same.

 

3: Very little. Like, I can open Ventrilo, talk, and my network meter will hardly move.

 

If neither of you are heavy users, then you'll have more than enough. You might want to both install a program like NetMeter which lets you monitor how much you're using and will alert you if it thinks you're going to run over the limit.

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2: YouTube uses less than people like to think it does but as long as you aren't watching HD, I doubt you'd rack up that much unless you're watching really long videos all the time. Spotify's usage is probably about the same.

Youtube uses a fair amount per video watched. If you're watching one three minute video a day on 320x resolution, you won't see much bandwidth usage.

 

However, if you're watching two hours of movies on HD, that can be just as bad as torrenting a full movie.

 

Point: Streaming doesn't always save bandwidth.

2: YouTube uses less than people like to think it does but as long as you aren't watching HD, I doubt you'd rack up that much unless you're watching really long videos all the time. Spotify's usage is probably about the same.

Youtube uses a fair amount per video watched. If you're watching one three minute video a day on 320x resolution, you won't see much bandwidth usage.

 

However, if you're watching two hours of movies on HD, that can be just as bad as torrenting a full movie.

 

Point: Streaming doesn't always save bandwidth.

That's not really what I was implying. I said it doesn't use as much as everyone thinks it does. It's not really going to save you bandwith either way but I know I don't rack up any more than 10GB a month on Youtube (and often it's far less than that); but I don't stream HD stuff because I'm impatient and the quality isn't that great anyway. The fact that he's going to be streaming full-length movies worries me more than YouTube use, and it's actually quite easy to go over if you're streaming those because you don't have any real idea of the video's filesize, etc.

 

I think you need to do everything in moderation if you've got such a small quota. I manage to go over 50GB most months quite easily, and that's with 100GB. I could probably just get by on 40 if I didn't torrent anything.

My brother can rack up 1GB a day in YouTube videos, so just be careful. Streaming is a crafty thing since a lot of people tend to get confused and don't think it's 'downloading' it, when it is.