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9:45 am
July 2, 2010
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I can't prove it, but I swear that our 4g Mobile Hotspot (Samsung – Verizon) uses a lot more bandwidth than when I connect any other way. When I'm tethered to my 3G smartphone, I use maybe 1 GB in a week. When I'm connecting to my Samsung Mobile Hotspot it's closer to 1GB/day!! That's a little exaggerated, but not much. At first I just chalked it up to having a faster connection meant that I did more. See my article, “My on the Road Data Diet” And, I had all sorts of background services running like Carbonite, that I needed to turn off. BUT – another time I really paid attention. Jim was working in the park office, so it was just me using the 4G hotspot. I turned off Carbonite, Dropbox, and automatic backups, and I was careful about not watching too many videos. I still racked up half a Gigabyte in one day! I don't get it.
Today I got an email from someone with the same problem:
We do NOT download any movies, nor do a lot of “heavy” downloads. For 2-3 years, we had a Verizon 3G card (plugged into a CradlePoint MBR 1000 router SO WE BOTH COULD BE ONLINE), and really liked it. NEVER, in that period of time, did we go over our 5 G limit.
As we began thinking about spending the winter in Florida, we decided to upgrade to the Verizon 4G router. During the LAST two weeks in Jan, we hit 6 gig ($ 10 dollar overage). Then, in February, we are already “over our 5G” limit. We can't figure out WHY we are going over, as we do very little downloading.
My question to you is–Would leaving the card in the router, thus “on”, when we're not using the computer, cause it to “keep hunting”, causing a use of bandwidth?
I really don't think that 'hunting for signal' uses up bandwidth – at least it shouldn't! If it uses any data at all, it should be tiny.
So – I'm starting this topic in hopes that some other folks will jump in here and we'll start to figure this out.
1:59 pm
November 3, 2009
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Automatic and manual OS, security, and program updates are another culprit, though certainly not enough to account for the excessive usage we see.
Helping Travelers to Plan, Preserve, and Share their Travels
8:20 pm
Teachers
August 5, 2010
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MrGeek said:
Automatic and manual OS, security, and program updates are another culprit, though certainly not enough to account for the excessive usage we see.
It falls back to our old network loading days Jim remember? When all the users ran weather programs, stock tickers, we need to look at all the apps see which ones refresh continuously. That trouble has moved to the smart phones as down load hogs.
.
Think about it how many time do you swipe the screen to look for items every time you swipe the screen you give pennies to the provider.
The new love hate relationship we love the device but hate the hidden cost. 
Watch out windows 8 is comming!
8:35 pm
November 3, 2009
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Looking forward to the new Windows. Download the preview tomorrow.
Helping Travelers to Plan, Preserve, and Share their Travels
1:11 pm
Since I went to a 4G MiFi device, my usage has more then doubled but my habits have not changed. I use the Internet the same as I always have, but instead of using 4-5 gig a month, now it is glose to 10 gig a month.
2:25 pm
We are with Sprint on our son-in-law’s (Dwayne) plan. He’s an exec with Sprint. We planned to switch to Verizon before we go fulltime. Dwayne agrees. I’m following this question about bandwidth useage with the 4G MiFi and today with Nick Russell’s comment in his blog to include this from the blog of one of his followers.
gypsyjournalrv.com/category/nicksblog
rsanityrvtravels.blogspot.com
Is there even an alternative to Verizon?
Bill
12:19 pm
We are with Sprint on our son-in-law's (Dwayne) plan. He's an exec with Sprint. We planned to switch to Verizon before we go fulltime. Dwayne agrees because of the coverage. I'm following this question about bandwidth usage with the 4G MiFi and today with Nick Russell's comment in his blog to include this from the blog of one of his followers.
http://gypsyjournalrv.com/cate…../nicksblog
http://rsanityrvtravels.blogspot.com/.
Is there even a viable alternative to Verizon?
Bill
9:52 pm
November 3, 2009
Offline
We still think Verizon is the way to go. If you travel, they have the best coverage and twice as many 4G locations as anyone.
Absolutely, make sure you change your hotspot password and watch your usage. Still use good WiFi when available.
Helping Travelers to Plan, Preserve, and Share their Travels
4:54 pm
July 2, 2010
Offline
This comment via email from Bill Joyce …
A few days ago I decided to see how much of my bandwidth ads were consuming so I moved to Chrome and added “Adblock Plus” to it. I am now using 1/3rd the bandwidth I was using just a few days ago! We might be able to live in 5GB per month since we used 12GB each of the last two months.
I am amazed but asking a couple other people who know I found they are not surprised. Ads are obnoxious and steal a lot of bandwidth. They do so in many ways but I am convinced it is the ads using unique names for each instance that really uses bandwidth. Each of those pieces gets its own browser cache entry so your browser cache is always getting full. Hit five web sites with “get rid of wrinkles using one trick” and you have five copies in your browser cache. Refresh a page and you get another. Let the page sit on a tab for half an hour and the ad server refreshes and puts even more in your cache.
Of course Google Adsense ads also get filtered out so friends with such ads will be bothered I am not seeing them.
My browsing is also much faster, some due to Chrome and some due to the lack of ads. Chrome’s caching might also be better than IE9, but I am not going to test Chrome with and without adblock installed. At least not now.
Diane uses less than I most days so I am not worried about her usage.
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