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Does My Space really use so much bandwidth?

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Grafter
Posts: 68
Registered: ‎04-08-2007

Does My Space really use so much bandwidth?

I have recently suffered increased bandwidth and after a topic in the old forum it seemed to point to my daughter being on holiday and sitting on My Space all day......
Well I looked at my usage for three days at the beginning of this billing cycle and I was averaging about 1.5GB per day.  So I quizzed her about it and we came to the conclusion that even when she was not at her computer she leaves it on even overnight (it's a Mac and they do their own housekeeping at night!) not that that bothers me but she was leaving all the browser windows open.
So I told her to close all the browser and MSN windows when she wasn't on it and I have just looked back on my usage today and there is a marked decrease in my usage....we are now talking MB instead of GB.
Does this seem likely and if so is it something that perhaps more people should be aware of?.....
6 REPLIES 6
orbrey
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Posts: 10,540
Registered: ‎18-07-2007

Re: Does My Space really use so much bandwidth?

It depends on a number of things. On some myspace pages people have music streaming, this will use bandwidth, as will ads that might change after each page refresh. I don't think MSN will do the same (though again this does display adverts) but it depends what (and how many) pages are left open in browsers.
Admittedly MySpace can use up a lot more bandwidth than other sites but we do assume people understand that if an application that accesses the internet is left running that it will continue to access the internet. Given the amount of bandwidth you state however it may be worth adding a paragraph to either the usage page, or the help pages advising of usage. We'll look into it for you.
James
Grafter
Posts: 21,036
Thanks: 5
Registered: ‎04-04-2007

Re: Does My Space really use so much bandwidth?

I remember speaking to a business customer who used their connection for a boarding school.  We had to have a bit of a chat because they were using 5GB+ a day during peak times and apparently it was just down to the teenage girls using myspace all of the time.  It can really vamp up on the old bandwidth front.
dave
Plusnet Help Team
Plusnet Help Team
Posts: 12,257
Thanks: 306
Fixes: 4
Registered: ‎04-04-2007

Re: Does My Space really use so much bandwidth?

I did a bit of research a while back to see how much bandwidth different sites and applications used, some of what I found is here:
http://community.plus.net/trafficmanagement/2007/06/21/the-beginning/
An hour of MySpace came back at around 400MB because all the pages are full of images, video and audio.
Dave Tomlinson
Enterprise Architect - Network & OSS
Plusnet Technology
John_Essex
Grafter
Posts: 6,983
Thanks: 8
Registered: ‎10-04-2007

Re: Does My Space really use so much bandwidth?

Yep
For the first time ever last month I got an email from Plusnet to inform me that I was nearing the limit, and that if my usage contiued then "Light Restrictions" would be applied.
When I looked into this it was because my son was home on holiday from Mascow and My daughter was home from university. Daughters boyfreind was also on Word of Warcraft almost 24 hrs a day.
Son and daughter were spending most of their web time on Myspace and You Tube looking at videos.
When I checked the useage it was sometimes as high as 3GB per day  Shocked
God
Grafter
Posts: 1,112
Registered: ‎30-07-2007

Re: Does My Space really use so much bandwidth?

I have MySpace barred on my router. The web site is great fun I am sure... But the bottom line is that whenever a page is opened (95% of the time) you are automatically streamed music, as folks change pages they get a new stream. LOL, or even worse if they open a new browser instance they probably have two streams going. And that's before the video kicks in.
So at best it is constant audio streaming if not video. Unless you don’t run even close to your allowance you should be careful!
I have also found that it seems to be choc a block with stuff that sends spyware detectors loopy... Out of all the sites my kids want to visit this is the only one I have banned on the router. It is a real bandwidth hog by default.
dave
Plusnet Help Team
Plusnet Help Team
Posts: 12,257
Thanks: 306
Fixes: 4
Registered: ‎04-04-2007

Re: Does My Space really use so much bandwidth?

MySpace is on my avoid list, I've not got to the point of blocking it yet because it's easily avoided. My blocks at the moment are mainly ad servers on my DNS server. Keep meaning to get some more filtering set up on my proxy server.
I can easily see you can get to 3GB of web traffic on sites like MySpace and YouTube. We've been expecting an increase in web traffic during the school holidays and started to see that a bit of that increase in the first week (as well as day time gaming traffic), but this week, probably because of the weather it's been a bit quieter.
Dave Tomlinson
Enterprise Architect - Network & OSS
Plusnet Technology