4G DATA USAGE INFORMATION
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How can I have control over my 4G connection Q.: Why do I “consume” more data through a 4G connection? A.: Bandwidth. The more bandwidth you have on an internet connection the more content you will be able to retrieve from internet. Also the content you view, will be delivered at a higher definition (HD). More bandwidth translates into more data consumption.
Q.: Is there any difference between the 4G service on my smart device and the 4G service on my router? A.: Yes, not in bandwidth but how our devices “recognise” the connection to the internet. Our mobile devices “know” they are connected to the internet through a 4G data connection therefore while connected in this manner they won’t download updates, they will browse the mobile versions of the websites (lighter in content), they will stream low quality or optimized media and they will ask us each time we want to download big content. This way, we might not even exceed 1GB (Giga Byte) of data downloaded in a month. With a router in between there is a different situation. Our devices “think” they are connected to a high bandwidth broadband connection, the game changes: there is no restriction, they will do all of the software and operating systems updates, download all email attachments, update our cloud with the recent photos taken, stream content in HD or Ultra HD quality and browse websites fully loaded with heavy media content. This way we might find ourselves in the situation where 200GB (Giga Byte) in a month is not enough. Same thing it will happen to our smart device connected through 4G if, for example, we turn it into a hotspot.
Q.: What can I do about it? A.: Not much but enough to make a difference. Firstly we have to be aware that these days most of the content we browse, stream or download is big or huge in size and that is down to the quality. We stream HD media from YouTube, Netflix, Amazon or any IPTV service out there, we store and backup our personal HD media or 20 megapixels HD photos on cloud services such as Dropbox or Google Drive, we download updates for our games, PCs (Windows, Mac, Linux) or update our applications on our smart devices. Everything adds up and the “killer” is by far the Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) such as Netflix, Youtube, Vimeo and the IPTV streaming. Think about that an hour of streaming HD media can add up to 7GB to our monthly consumption; also many people would say: “I don’t download stuff from the Internet”. OK, fair enough but how many hours you watch videos from the internet each month?!
Let’s get this information very well into our heads: streaming media means downloading media.
Let’s see what we can do about it:
Netflix This is what Netflix recommends: “Below are the Internet download speed recommendations per stream for playing movies and TV shows through Netflix. 0.5 Megabits per second - Required broadband connection speed 1.5 Megabits per second - Recommended broadband connection speed 3.0 Megabits per second - Recommended for SD quality
5.0 Megabits per second - Recommended for HD quality 25 Megabits per second - Recommended for Ultra HD quality” Obviously through a 4G connection the videos will stream in HD or Ultra HD quality by default but the playback settings can be amended.
The suggestion would be to set the playback settings to Medium or Low. There is a difference between 0.3GB or 0.7GB and 3GB or 7GB per hour. It can be done by browsing to https://www.netflix.com/HdToggle
YouTube Roughly the same amount of data as Netflix per hour. Suggestion: Click the settings icon on the lower right of the video window and set the quality to something lower than 720p. 480p will do in most cases but don’t let it on auto as it will jump to 1080p and obviously “eat” unnecessary data.
Vimeo Same as YouTube, big amount of data per video if left on auto. Suggestion: click the HD icon and set the resolution to something lower than 720p but don’t leave it on auto, like that the “weight” of the video you stream will be less.
Generally any CDN Here we can include all of the rest as they are many: Amazon TV & Amazon Videos, Movies on Google Store, Apple TV, ITunes, Spotify, you name it. They are all the same, lowering the quality down to the point you reach to a compromise between your expectation and media quality will help you to save. Obviously no one likes to watch pixelated videos so it’s up to you!
Applications & Operating Systems updates Most of the applications installed on your devices regardless of their type (Personal Computers, Set Top Boxes, Smart Phones, Mobile Devices, Tablets, even Game Consoles) do search the internet for updates and in most of the cases, if any update is available, they will download the update and then ask you if you want them to be installed. Suggestion: change the behaviour of these updates and don’t let them to be downloaded when they want to. Set your application to notify you when and update is available but not to download automatically. You can then download them while connected to a fixed broadband connection where the amount of data downloaded is not important. Operating Systems… they are the worst. Lately Microsoft start migrating all pre Windows 10 versions to Windows 10. The size of Windows 10 before installation can be up to 3.5GB and it will start to download in the background as many times necessary to successfully complete the download of the full package ready to be installed. Depending on how many PCs you have and retries, this update (or Windows updates in general) can add to the quota a pretty big amount. Suggestion: same as above, set the updates to be done manually.
Cloud services or networks. (Back Up – ICloud/Google +) Pretty much everyone that respects its personal data has a form of Cloud service to back it up. Only mentioning the most popular here: Dropbox, Apple and Google. Obviously we have set up one or more device with the same cloud account. Now the question to the user would be: “How many photos have you done with your brand new 20 mega pixels Digital Camera at the last party?” 20? Less? OK. How many videos did you record with your DSLR camera or your Hero Go Pro? An HD photo can be big, maybe 2MB up to 10 MB (Mega Bytes). We offload these photos or videos from the camera to our PC, precisely in the folder backed up by the Cloud. These photos will start the transfer uploading to the cloud and your other devices have a big chance to actually download them in the same time. That’s how it works.
Suggestion: synchronize your data between your devices connecting through an alternative connection. Maybe at work for example! In the same time, some cloud applications support synchronisation via LAN, that is a “must enable” feature.
Regular Website Browsing Regular? Normal? No, nothing is anywhere close to that. Let’s have a look at your favourite news site and the adverts you get while you browse to the news they all are “heavy” and “fancy”, sometimes they even show you videos which you don’t want to see or trailers of the latest blockbusters in cinema. Well, they download automatically and they can be big. That’s data consumption. Suggestion: find them and pause them. Also you can change the settings of your browser to increase the cached data; that will help if you visit the same website over and over again. A bigger cache will store locally on your hard drive the media available on the website and it will retrieve from your hard drive instead of the internet. It will help a bit but honestly not that much. Anyway, think that every bit helps! Facebook. While scrolling down your wall or your home page do you notice that the videos start playing on their own? Stop them if you don’t feel like watching: In your Facebook settings, select Account Settings, then Videos and Photos, and then under Auto Play – select ‘never Auto-play videos.’
IPTV Sometimes the only way to watch television from our own countries is by subscribing to an IPTV service. It’s easy, doesn’t require a dish and its simple, a Set Top Box and problem solved. But is it if we have a 4G connection to the internet? The problem starts when we realise that one hour of watching TV can translate to quite a lot of data we download from the Internet. Again: streaming media means downloading media, therefore downloading data, Gigabytes of data. Let’s have a look at how much data we download while we stream at a rate of 2mbps (two megabit per second). An average of 2mbps is the usual SD (Standard Definition) transmission of media content through an IPTV service. Right. Streaming at 2mbps means that we download 2/8 = 0.25 MB (Mega Bytes of data) each second. There are 3600 seconds in an hour so: 2.25MB x 3600 = 900MB in one hour. Yes, that’s right, 0.9GB (Giga Byte) in one hour. There go the questions: how many hours do you watch IPTV per day? How many hours per month? You do the math. The real question is: how many hours is the TV on, streaming IPTV, and how many hours are you in front of your TV and really watching. (We’ll leave this one set for a minute!).
Since we started with questions: here’s another one: do you have a subscription for a HD (High Definition) IPTV service? Only asking because the data transferred (downloaded) can be double or triple the amount. Well, I think by now you’ve realised that streaming (watching IPTV) an average of 4 hours a day at a Standard Definition quality can add up nearly 0.9 x 4 x 30=108GB (Giga Bytes) to your quota and in the same time if the IPTV service or channel is delivered in High Definition can be up to 0.9(data per hour) x 4(hours) x 30(days) x 3(for HD) = 324GB in a month. Fact: do you listen to your favourite Radio Station from or through the internet? You stream it? Know that a HD radio stream @128kbps can add up to 1GB in 18 hours…. How many hours do you listen to the internet radio? Suggestion: get a secondary connection for this bandwidth hungry services. There’s no way around it because the channels are set by the provider, some can be HD some can be SD, it depends on what channel you watch and the quality at which is delivered.
BitTorrent Downloads Everyone’s favourite, it works by downloading small bits of files from many different sources at the same time. It is popularly known as a method of piracy, but isn’t just for pirates. Obviously we’re not going to talk here about the legalities even if some countries adopted a Copyright Alert System “hunting” for bit torrent users. (Understandable if we think that 12% of North Aberica traffic or 36% of Asia-Pacific region traffic is attributed to BitTorrent) Well, what we might not know here is that, say uTorrent (most common) application, after installation, it will start with the computer and if you downloaded a file then that file will be available for others to be downloaded. Obviously you can upload a file three or maybe four times (depending on how much time you use uTorrent) while you downloaded only once. That adds up in the end. Suggestion: delete the torrent from your torrent list and/or limit your torrent client’s upload down to the very minimum.
General awareness Be aware that same as we breathe air, our devices which connect to the internet “breathe” KB (Kilo Bytes), KB which eventually will add up to GB (Giga Bytes). Stop them connecting to the internet when they don’t have to by turning off your router. Security & sharing: Always make sure the router’s WiFi is secured with a WPA2 key and don’t share it with your neighbour, your neighbour won’t know everything that’s been described in this paper. Even if he would do, he won’t care, he’s not the one paying for it! IPTV Service. If you still want to stream IPTV through your 4G connection then always make sure the Set Top Box is turned off if you don’t watch the TV. Turning off only the television set won’t stop the STB from streaming the same channel for another hour or two until it will go to sleep on its own (it your STB has that feature).
Monitor your traffic There are many applications you can use to monitor your bandwidth and data consumptions. We’ll enumerate a few which will help you get an idea of how much data that one device you install them on, will download and upload. You can install for your informational purposes. Windows: Networks (https://www.softperfect.com/products/networx/) - is a free utility that resides in the taskbar and will monitor bandwidth used on all adapters of your PC. It also tallies total usage by day, week, and month, lets you export that data. OS X: iStat Menus 5 (https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/) iStat Menus brings a wealth of information about your Mac to the menu bar. Linux: ifstat (http://gael.roualland.free.fr/ifstat/) - ifstat is a tool to report network interfaces bandwith just like vmstat/iostat do for other system counters. ifstat gathers these statistics from the kernel internal counters, which is highly operating system dependent. Android: Onavo Count (http://www.onavo.com/apps/android_count/) - Onavo Count monitors and analyses all types of mobile data and phone use. This includes background, foreground, and Wi-Fi use. iOS: Data Usage (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/data-usage/id386950560?mt=8) - Data Usage helps keep you on top of all the data you're using, alerts you as much or as little as you want, and provides in-depth statistics.
A lot has been covered here and there’s a lot to cover still. Just remember: at the moment any of our devices connect to the internet, that device will download and upload data. It is very important to take control and manage that.