With advertisements from ISP’s boasting new internet connection packages with faster and faster speeds, I have to wonder if you (presently) really need speeds exceeding ~4Mbps (~500KB/s). While it is hard to argue faster is not better, it is important to understand that while your connection may support ultra fast transfer speeds, your speed is limited by...

I have posted about several tools in the past which allow you to monitor the bandwidth usage on your computer. While these work great for individual machines, what if you want to monitor your entire network? While you could install a bandwidth monitor on each computer and add up the numbers, the easist way is to just view the bandwidth totals on your router...

Bandwidth restriction by the ISP directly is something most U.S. users don’t have to deal with – yet. But other countries have had to deal with monthly bandwidth limitations more or less since broadband was first introduced in their part of the world. Here in the U.S., Comcast is gunning to impose monthly data restrictions widely, however...

With ISP’s starting to be more aware of their customer’s rising bandwidth usage, many are imposing restriction. With this, the need for utilities which can help monitor your bandwidth can quite useful. One tool you might find interesting is NetWorx. The program allows you to monitor all your network connections or a specific network connection (such...

The phrase traffic shaping is a polite term for bandwidth throttling. It’s when an ISP purposely slows download speeds during peak usage hours of the day. This includes weekends. And if you hadn’t heard, traffic shaping is most likely going mobile. If it happens industry wide, it’ll be a joke to label 3G as fast after that. The people who get...

Remember all those "web accelerators" from the days of dial-up internet which basically acted like a filter and/or cached more to appear as if you were doing things faster on the web? Maybe you do. Google had their own version of it called the Google Web Accelerator and have officially killed it. Yes, I did try one several accelerator-style products...

In the United States we don’t necessarily have a problem (yet) with what’s known as "capped bandwidth" (i.e. your ISP puts a usage limit on how much data you can transfer per month), but for other places it’s a big deal because once you tap the limit, your ISP slows you down to snail-crawl speeds until next month when the limit is...

If you are a customer of an Internet Service Provider (ISP) who is monitoring your bandwidth usage, a useful tool for you is a bandwidth meter. While most of you out there will probably never run into issues with bandwidth limitations, inevitably some of you will. To help watch your usage, check out NetMeter. NetMeter is a free bandwidth monitoring tool which...

A very recent post on PCMech.com touched on something that every Internet user needs to take notice of…’Net Neutrality.  While the article, “Metered Bandwidth = Bad Idea” was well written, it only scratches the surface of this important subject. ‘Net Neutrality is the notion that Internet users have the RIGHT to determine what content they...

If you are looking to test the actual speed of your Internet connection, the traditional way is to use a standard Internet speed tester, such as the Speakeasy Speed Test. An alternate way Firefox users might want to explore is the Bandwidth Tester extension. The difference between the two is explained rather well on the Bandwidth Tester’s page: This tool...

Time-Warner is testing out a new ISP pricing schema in Beaumont TX whereas people would be given a monthly data usage cap between 5 and 40GB. Anything over that amount and the customer is charged $1 per GB. This has “bad idea” written all over it because it restricts customers as to what they can do on the internet. With the advent of video-intensive...