Home Broadband Usage

gubble

Currently doing a review on our utility suppliers at the moment and looked at broadband.

I was shocked to find out that our average broadband usage is 350GB per month and that increased to 600GB in December.

Now our house has myself, my wife, her ageing mother in law and a lodger.

The wife and I are probably moderate/heavy users as we primarily watch TV on catch up or on demand services. However I'd say this represents maybe 1-2 hours a day of streaming plus normal internet usage on phones.

The mother in law isn't there for 50% of the week and doesn't stream anything.

So what on earth is our lodger doing? Ok I know he only streams TV etc however that sort of usage is insane - especially when you consider everyone in the house works a 40 hour week so they're not there 24/7.

I'm going to switch provided and I'm tempted to tell him to get his own broadband line if he wants to continue at that level

revsorg

Is your wifi password secure?

gubble

revsorg said:

Is your wifi password secure?

Yes it is. We are also in a remote location. We have one neighbour who could in theory piggy back off our router, however they have their own router and having checked the devices that have attached I recognise them all, nothing unknown to me.

Anyone else would have to literally be sat outside the house

Modulus_Amps

1 gig a day, streaming services can be very intensive, downloading them even more so. if you have a lodger do they pay rent and toward utilities?
Get a service that does not charge you based on what you use.

stickyfiddle

600GB in a month is 20GB per day. 

Netflix says their HD content is 3GB per hour, and UHD is 7GB per hour.  So if your lodger is streaming UHD that could actually be reasonable, based on 3 hours a day average. 

https://help.netflix.com/en/node/87

BigBearKris

Torrents.

boogieman

Has this lodger got one massive forearm? 

vasselmeyer

Porn. Wash the sheets regularly and deep clean the carpets.

Legionreturns

Does it matter? If you're not being charged more and it doesn't slow your services down it shouldn't make a difference. Most if these packages have a fair use policy, which if you're not being shouted at about, isn't an issue

gubble

BigBearKris said:

Torrents.

that's it I'm guessing. I'm not being funny but I don't like the idea of someone using it for illegal activity when the account is in my name. So he's going to have to get his own broadband.

BigBearKris

gubble said:

BigBearKris said:

Torrents.

that's it I'm guessing. I'm not being funny but I don't like the idea of someone using it for illegal activity when the account is in my name. So he's going to have to get his own broadband.

You may want to start looking for a new lodger at the same time.

Flink_Poyd

Last call to Virgin and they told me I was up to about 7-800GB per month. 4 people in the house on everything from YouTube to online gaming via PC, Xbox and phones. I don't have a cap,AFAIK it's the unlimited (fair usage) deal so I wouldn't worry unless the lodger is doing something dodg

randella

boogieman said:

Has this lodger got one massive forearm? 

Well played sir.

TimmyO

We use over 900GB/mo

bingefeller

That's not a lot to be honest, I'm well over 1TB a month.  

spark240

Do all those Apps running in background use your data up?

Bridgehouse

I doubt it’s torrents. Not unless he’s downloading mahoosive films in UHD. 

My guess is netflix/on demand/music and so forth. 

Does your router allow you to analyse traffic per device? 

Sporky

bingefeller said:

That's not a lot to be honest, I'm well over 1TB a month.  

Amateur.

350 petabytes arrived at Chateau Sporky last month.

Grumpyrocker

Videogames? Many games are 50-100GB these days.

ThePrettyDamned

Games is my guess. 

RiftAmps

2.5 people in our house, our monthly average useage is 960GB. We've always been heavy users but since switching to a 4k TV setup it's gone up loads.....Netflix, Amazon etc, Unlimited usage is a godsend.