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 there’s a problem and a huge one at that. There’s no way for the customer to check what they’ve used. This is like having a car without a fuel gauge or a cell phone without a battery life indicator. Comical? Yes.

Here are some things that are even more comical.

If you use any online banking at all, every time you login to whatever system you use, you’re blasted to “go paperless.” The supposed benefits are that it saves trees. Not true. All it does is save the bank the cost of mailing a bill to you. Regardless of that, what’s the point of going paperless if it puts a draw on your monthly bandwidth restriction that would potentially cost you more?

Want a better example? No problem.

Video web sites like YouTube and Hulu tell everybody that you should watch them instead of regular television. So let’s say you do. Do you have any idea how much draw all that video Flash content has? Quite a bit.

And the best example of all:

Our own President want to make sure that the entire nation has a minimum 10 megabit connectivity speed for all broadband connections. This is a good idea. But then all this means is that you’ll tap your bandwidth limit faster, so it serves no benefit.

It could be that our very own ISPs make this massive speed-increase effort by our own government to drop like a brick by widely imposing bandwidth restrictions. They have a saying in the military to describe this scenario: “Hurry up and wait.”

Do you have a monthly bandwidth limit where you are?

If you do, do you have some sort or metering program that tells you what you’ve used? If so, great! Comcast doesn’t.

Have you found your bandwidth restriction to get in the way of doing things you want to do on the internet?

Let us know by posting a comment.

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 as Ethernet or PPP) only. The software also features a system of highly customizable visual and sound alerts. You can set it up to alert you when the network connection is down or when some suspicious activity, such as unusually heavy data flow, occurs. It can also automatically disconnect all dialup connections and shut down the system.

For the most part, unless you are a really heavy user which does a lot of downloading or watching videos online, this isn’t something you need to be worried about. However, if you ever do get a warning from your ISP, having a tool to help track and report on your usage can be very valuable.

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 cheated most from the shaping are those who specifically pay extra each month for an upgraded "fast" ISP account.

For example, your ISP has a super-duper fiber package that promises "lightning" (they like using that word a lot) fast connectivity. "Blazing" (there’s another) speeds, super-fast everything and oh yeah, this is totally worth the money and you should get a second or third job just to have it.

So you get it. Then one day you’re using the internet and everything is slow. You reboot your computer. OK. You check/restart the router. OK. You check/restart the modem. OK. Nothing is wrong.

What happened?

You might be a victim of traffic shaping.

How to check if this is so? Examine your ISP’s terms of service and acceptable use policy. Look for things like "moderation of speed" or the like. If you see it, your ISP does use traffic shaping.

What to do after that? Tell your friends (especially if they’re on the same ISP). Blog it. Spread the word around. Make it very well known your ISP does this.

An ISP that promises fast speeds with upgraded accounts only to knock those speeds down from shaping later is just plain wrong because at that point you’re paying for nothing. It’s like if you bought a Chevrolet Corvette and the engine was programmed to only deliver full power between 1am and 5am. That’s not what you bought the car for. You bought it so you could have all power under your right foot whenever it suits you. That’s how a premium ISP account should act as well, period.

How long is it going to take before people get so angry that they’ll sue the ISP for not delivering on their advertised claims – again?

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 during the old days of dial-up, and they were all terrible. Most of them slowed down your computer to a crawl which actually made your browsing slower.

In the modern day of broadband there is no need for accelerators anymore. And if you’re using dial-up I still wouldn’t use one.

The way to browse faster today is the same way you browsed faster back then:

• Try not to use plugins or add-ons in your browser. Keep it minimal or alternatively don’t use any.
• Use an email client instead of web-based mail and download "headers only" for each mail received.
• Use alternative lightweight instant messengers that don’t load ads.
• Avoid sites that make extensive use of Flash.
• Use RSS to get content for web sites.
• Use things on the internet that require minimalist bandwidth (like IRC).

If you have "slow broadband", what do you do to save bandwidth?

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 reset.

This information is also useful to those on broadband connections and wi-fi spots where speed counts the most (the less you load the less time you have to wait).

1. Use RSS

Whether you use Bloglines, Google Reader or a client like RSS Bandit, using RSS is faster and uses much less bandwidth than loading a web site directly. PCMech, for example, has article content delivered via RSS.

2. Don’t load Flash content

Concerning file size, text is small, images are relatively small but Flash content is rarely small. You can uninstall the Flash plugin entirely but if you don’t want to do that (and I don’t blame you), use the Firefox extension Flashblock instead where you can turn it off and on at whim.

3. Use an e-mail client instead of web-based mail

Every time you load web-based mail in a browser (no matter what provider you use) it’s full of coding that on load makes it a bit large file-size wise. And if it’s a free mail provider there are also advertisements loaded in as well. If you use a traditional e-mail client like Outlook Express, Mozilla Thunderbird or Windows Live Mail it’s loaded locally and the only bandwidth it uses is when you send or receive mail.

Tip: Have the client download headers only whether using POP or IMAP. This way no mail is fully downloaded unless you specifically instruct the client to do it. This is especially useful if you receive file attachments often.

4. Use a free multi-protocol instant messaging app

Free multi-protocol instant messaging apps don’t load advertisements and purposely don’t have all the "cool" features from-service clients do which cuts bandwidth usage (every little bit counts). Some choices are Trillian, Pidgin, and Miranda.

5. Turn your computer off when not in use

Although this is really obvious, if your computer is making no network requests it’s not using any bandwidth at all. Most of us leave our computers on all the time, but if bandwidth is a concern, turn it off when you’re not using it.

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 watches both your upload and download usage. There are lots of options you can configure such as the color and font scheme as well as which network cards you want to watch (in the event you have more than one). Another handy feature is NetMeter can project your anticipated usage which may be attractive for those with limations.

For the most part, this utility is a good tool to have for those concerned about their net usage. Power users may find this an interesting toy to play with as well.

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 view, and the applications they use to view it, on the Internet. Seems pretty logical, but this basic freedom is being threatened by ISPs and  Big Telco companies…the very companies YOU use to access the Internet. Continued

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 is more accurate than many of the website testers because it downloads several files at different sizes to find your average connection speed. However, this is also dependant on where you are in relation to where the test files are being served from. You can change the test files used in the Bandwidth Tester options.

To me, the explanation makes a lot of sense as when you are browsing the Internet you are typically downloading many smaller files instead of a single big file. This is a good way to make sure you are utilizing the Internet speed you are paying for.

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 (and thereby bandwidth-intensive) services like internet television and the like, putting a cap on people’s bandwidth does nothing but get in the way.

TW, if you happen to read this, here’s my suggestion: Give people the option of whether they want this or not. Price the “capped” plans lower than the regular non-capped plans and people will go for it. You know this would work. If you completely switch over the pricing schema to metered-only you’ll not only have customers but businesses going after your throats.

Going 100% metered is short-term gain, long-term loss. Don’t do it.

[Source: washingtonpost.com]