Data caps

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Kind of a dumb question but.... I see Verizon has caps on data amount on their broadband cards. They have a nifty calculator to get a very approx. amount on how much one might use in a month. They ask about how many times you visit web pages. Are they talking about separate web pages? Can you flip back and forth and facebook IE: games etc. and count that as ONE web page?
 

Raz0rEdge

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Those calculators can be very wrong unless they specifically ask you to provide the web pages you frequent and they go off and do some calculations on how much data is being transferred each time you visit that page..

Each website loads whole bunch of stuff apart from the HTML page (images, videos, music, and so on) and each of those things go against your cap.

To get an idea of how much Ethernet traffic is happening on your Mac you can open up the Terminal and type "ifconfig en0" and look for "RX bytes" and "TX bytes". Save the current numbers somewhere and then go about your web browsing, video watching, email sending and whatever else you do, then go back and check those numbers out and that gives you a rough idea of how much data was passed back and forth between your Mac and various websites..

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BrianLachoreVPI


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When you install the Verizon software - there is a page that tells you officially how much data you are using - according to Verizon and how they will bill you. I have been using Verizon broadband for travel since 2006 - not as my primary. Even with heavy travel - i.e. constant use for 2.5 weeks this last Februrary - I stayed below 5GB. (Maybe 4GB so it was close)

I am a heavy user as I have a lot of software and linux distros that I need to download. I don't think 5GB or 10GB would be enough for me, but if all you do is web, email, facebook and games you could probably easily stay below the 5GB.

The best way - is as above - monitor usage with a program to get a feel of what each page uses.

But to answer your question when you hit a page you send a http request (which is data) then the server sends you the web page (which is also data) some pages have autorefresh(like facebook), games can be constantly sending and receiving data as well - not always - i.e. flash will usually download the game as a program and it runs locally while you are on the page. As stated - there could be ads or whatnot on the page which could be sending and receiving data. Independent of the Web your computer could be sending and receiving data like network time updates, software update checks, bonjour checks, etc. Another good program is called little snitch - helps you monitor what processes are trying to communicate on your computer.
Little Snitch
After installing - I found there was a surprisingly large amount of software that wants to send/receive data.
 
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dolphin01
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ok.. I must be reading this wrong or something because this can't be right. I downloaded surplus meter. I've been emailing a friend back and forth today and maybe only looked at 4 websites and I'm already in the BRIGHT RED. Meaning, I'm over for the day. I have it set for 3GB which is what verizon has per month on one of their plans. I'm already at 1146.5 mb!! How can this be? It says I only have 66.4MB left for the month.
 

Raz0rEdge

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Once you started the application, did you Reset the values and then go about browsing? When I started the application, it immediately said that I'd used up 14xx MB and had 16xx MB left..

Once I reset the numbers and then did
Code:
wget http://www.skoobysoft.com/downloads/SurplusMeterv203.dmg

in the terminal, I could see it more accurately say that I downloaded just the file size and as I've been typing this message I can see that it's been increasing slowly..

Regards
 

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