Help Pls

[Lenna]

Right can someone explain to me how much usage of internet bandwidth is taken up by using an IM messenger and looking at one website. basically the IM messenger is CONNECTED all the time but not necessarily used.

Can someone answer me this, because my brother got a letter complaining we were using too much GB a month. and our average is 40gb a month. (anyone have freeserve/wanadoo bb could help with this).

I only sit on msn and chat while looking at this site.
My brother is connected to Limewire pro constantly, and is constantly downloading.

I've been told I have to limit my time on the net or I'm going to get my access cut off.

Who is using the more bandwidth? Please help.

[Samuraid]

Limewire...no doubt about it.

Chat programs use very little bandwidth (when you are not using them to transfer files) and this forum uses an html compression system that makes bandwidth usage very small when you visit this forum.

[Lenna]

Thank you. My mum wont believe me though, she thinks that because I'm connected to the net all the time, and connected to Msn that I'm the one using up the monthly usage

[Ism]

Rofl. Like your mum is gonna believe some random people on this website. If she thinks its you then you will take the blame. But i dont think it is you. if thats a consellation.

[Samuraid]

How about a little math?

Let's assume you are sending 2 chat messages every second, and you are using your chat program 24 hours a day. (I'm over-estimating here :) ) Let's also assume that each chat message you send is on average 200 letters long. That makes about 988 MB of bandwidth per month...less than 1 GB. You said that you also like to visit this forum. Each page on this forum is around 20 KB average. Let's say you visit 500 pages on this forum every day. (I'm over estimating again :) ) That comes out to about 3 GB per month.

If you add the amount for your chat program and for this forum:
1 GB + 3 GB = 4 GB total for the month.

Therefore, there is no way you are using 40 GB of bandwidth with your chat program and browsing this forum...

On the other hand, let's assume your brother is downloading on limeware only 4 hours a day. (I'm under-estimating here...just to prove a point). Let's also assume he is getting slow download speeds of about 50 KB per second. That comes out to a grand total of 20.6 GB of bandwidth per month! And I would assume that he is downloading a lot more than that.

And there you have it. :D

[Lenna]

Our limit is 40gb, and we're 8GB over. they're threatening to cut us off if we don't cut it down. And actually Ism. I told her that I checked up on it and asked a few people and she said ok. So I'm off the hook lol. I don't have to cut down my usage. :)