My Wet Coast Life

With all the commotion going on in Canada over UBB, regardless if it does go ahead or not on March 1st, there are things you can do to try and reduce your bandwidth consumption. Now for some, you may already know this, for others, this bandwidth usage concept is new to them. I am also not the only resource for steps to save bandwidth, I just plan to point out the free steps you can take to reduce your bandwidth consumption. If you're wondering why I am posting these steps, you can read my previous article on UBB as seen by me. Plus, I have a possible big issue to raise for anyone that use router/modem combos from their ISP. It could be well worth your bank account to learn about this possible issue. Just trust me on it, I'll explain more later in this article.

The people of Canada have spoken out over usage-based billing to the point that Prime Mister Stephen Harper has finally gotten involved and tweeted yesterday to say:

"We're very concerned about CRTC's decision on usage-based billing and its impact on consumers. I've asked for a review of the decision." @pmHarper.

This shows the Prime Minister is aware and wants to let every Canadian know or maybe he just wants to reduce the volume of messages being sent his way. Especially once you factor in the Conservatives have yet post anything related to UBB or show they oppose the decision by the CRTC on usage-based billing, based on most recent media releases on their site. The NDP is opposed to UBB and got their Digital Issues Critic Charlie Angus to call on the Conservative government to better protect Canadian internet consumers. The Liberals are also against UBB which shows most political groups are finally listening but only kinda in my opinion for the party in power. Now all of this political issue jumping, I take with a grain of salt (maybe some lime and tequila). Why? This ruling has been out for 60 days and the Liberals and NDP were slow to respond. They are only taking action now with 30 days left and probably more based on the recent volume of complaints than the willingness to step up and protect Canadian's best interests. Maybe they are just participating now as a political measure in seeking to get votes and switch some Conservatives. Just a thought?

At the time of this writing, OpenMedia.ca was showing over 334,000 people have signed the online petition which is good but I like stats and want a bit of prospective on how well it is doing so far. As of 2009, we had a population over 33,894,000 people in Canada. Of that, 25,086,000 are Internet users as of September, 2009 (source) which works out to over 74% of the Canadian population is online. But if you look at OpenMedia.ca's petition, around 1% of all Canadians have signed this and if we only factor in Internet users, as they are the ones affected by CRTC's decision, that works out to just over 1.3%.

To give you an idea that more people need to get involved for the anti-UBB campaign, the anti-HST campaign in BC required 10% of all constituents in each riding to sign the petition to be heard by the provincial legislature. They succeeded. Now I know this is something completely different as UBB only affects internet users, both businesses and consumers, and we have shown 1 in 4 Canadians do not use internet but we should try and hit that same 10% goal with at least 2.5 million signatures of Internet users. If Canadians aim for a 10% of all Canadian internet users petition, then OpenMedia is just over 10% of the goal with less than a month to go. In the last couple of days due to media attention, that number is growing around 50,000 signatures a day and would come out to around 1.3 million give or take by the end of the month. So if you're reading this and against it and haven't added your signature, click here, I'll wait for you to finish. Either way, 10% or not, OpenMedia.ca stepped up to take the lead on this issue on behalf of Canadians and so far appear to be doing a good job of it as over 334,000 people have agreed to use them as a portal to convey the dissatisfaction over UBB.

Now that shouldn't be hard when we have that many people online and very few, if any, do not have some form of UBB already in place, including myself. I get 62GB for $39.50/month from my ISP and pay $1/GB overage which isn't bad compared to others at up to $5/GB overage. Sadly, my ISP does not provide anywhere for me to find out my usage. So other than a possible nasty bill at the end of the month or calling in an waiting on hold, I have no way of knowing my total usage. I have sent them a request via their website asking for my bandwidth usage and where I can check online (and use my own bandwidth to find out, oooohhh...the irony) but am still waiting for that reply and the site states up to 3 days for a response. But if people are willing to take action, that is another case. We will just have to sit back and see once more and more people realize they will be affected and the internet bill is about to go up or usage a lot less to keep at your normal monthly amount.

Now before we go into what you can do to reduce bandwidth, I want to share 2 images related to UBB. One is to put Canada's situation in context and the second to give you a good laugh with a side of reality check. The first image shows someone from the Middle East comparing their current internet to Canada's. This shows we are not bad off compared to other countries, so count yourself lucky even if UBB gets implemented. The second image gave me a good laugh as it shows it is theoretically cheaper to buy an expensive solid state hard drive, fill it with 300GB of data, ship it across Canada and then throw it out once you're done and it is still cheaper than downloading the same volume of data at $2/GB.

So what can you do to reduce bandwidth usage?
Well, that all comes down to what you do and what steps you are willing to take and what you are willing to possibly sacrifice. This is by no means a finite list, google "reducing bandwidth" for a bunch of more sites on ways to save plus I am only pointing out a couple measures that would have a decent impact on bandwidth usage. So let's kick it off with the economic impact on business due to UBB tip #1 for you to save your precious bandwidth.

Follow up:

TIP #1: Install Ad Blocking software.
Why? If I am now paying for my bandwidth, like hell I am going to use my bandwidth to serve me ads. How many of you want to pay to see an advertisement? Exactly. So depending on which browser you use, there are various free and paid for ad blocking software out there. Up to about a month ago, I did not run ad blocking software as I know ad revenue keeps sites running but UBB has forced my economic decision. I use Firefox so I run AdBlockPlus (you can install here if you use Firefox). Now the nice thing with AdBlockPlus is you can set certain sites to allow ads while blocking others as well as configure the blocking filters being used. Now why would I allow ads on some sites? Well, that is how some sites pay for hosting. No ads = no revenue = no more site. So for my favorite sites such as Reddit.com, I allow ads to ensure that site stays up as I like that site. As for my Facebook account, the ads are getting out of control and blocking ads is in full affect. It is so much cleaner and less cluttered now. On a side note, if you want a bit faster version of Firefox, try Firefox Beta and then take 5 minutes and configure these speed tweaks for a decent improvement.

For Google Chrome users, there is a Chrome version of AdBlockPlus, you can get it here. Now for those still using Internet Explorer, sorry, you will need to find your own solution or take the time to switch now to Firefox or Chrome. If you want to know why there is no AdBlockPlus for IE, Wladimir Palant at AdBlockPlus explains it on the AdBlockPlus.org blog.

The drawback to this tip ultimately means your favorite sites that depend on ad revenue could go away or you could be forced to pay to see there content to keep the site up. Upside is your not paying for ads and your pages are less cluttered.

Tip #1.5: Pop up and Flash blocker
Now this is just adds to Tip #1 and I would say are optional. You've blocked ads but still need to deal with certain popups and flash-based content. Up to you at this point if you want to install a popup blocker as ads have been dealt with and what is a popup? Really just a new window with another ad in it. But adding a popup blocker may save you a bit more bandwidth based on the sites you visit and browser you use.

As for Flash, it is used by advertisers but also by valid websites such as YouTube or to play your favorite game on Facebook. At this time, not worth it to block it in my opinion as it would be taking out valid features but that may change down the road especially with HTML5 picking up and based on the UBB outcome. If you do want to take this step, there are browser add-ins that will block Flash content. If too lazy to search for plugins, then do it the brute force way and uninstall Flash.

TIP #2: If you use Wireless, lock it down!
If you live in close proximity to your neighbors or in an apartment and are running wifi, then your neighbors can see your connection and if it unsecured, use it. Do you really want to get a bill showing a neighbor used your connection for the large downloads? To setup, go to your router manufacturer's website for steps on how to login and configure wifi encryption. Steps vary based on manufacture and type so not putting steps here, that is what Google is for.

Tip 3#: Disable image display in the browser
Now this is taking it to the next step but if you surf the net and only look at text, you can disable images from loading thus saving more bandwidth. Now keep in mind, that can negatively impact your "online experience" but can help saving the extra bandwidth if you so decide, i leave this option up to you. Most browsers have this under the options menu. For Firefox users, click Tools, Select Options and then the Content tab. Uncheck "Load images automatically" to enable. You can also add websites to an exception list and once done, click OK to accept your changes. For Chrome users, click the Wrench symbol and select Options. From there, select "Under the Hood" tab and then click the Content Settings button. When the new window opens, select Images from left side menu and on right side, select "Do Not Show Any Images" (plus you can add exceptions too on the same screen.

Tip #4: Watch videos in non-HD format
Depending on what videos you watch online and the length of the video, you can save on bandwidth by watching lower resolution versions compared to the HD versions. So for those videos that don't need high resolution, select the lower bandwidth version. Using YouTube as an example, it uses around 100MB/Hour (37.5 Kb/s) of bandwidth watching based on the Wiki page. One blog pointed out in 2009 that there's no specific bit rate that YouTube videos are encoded with. It can be as low as 140Kbps and as high as 1024Kbps for HD videos. Covert bits to bytes and that ranges from 17.5KB/s to 128KB/sec. The actual amount used will depend on resolution and type of video but generally, this is around the average bandwidth per hour. So taking the 100mb/hour, 10 Hours of videos would work out to around 1GB of bandwidth (+/- 100MB). Okay, sounds reasonable, kinda but how many of you just watch one video? You may be watching one but could have others loading in another tab. If that's the case, Amit Bhawani's blog takes this into consideration and does some quick math.

10 Loading Videos X Each 10 Minutes Size X 90Mb[Approx Size] = 900 Mb of data being downloaded to your computer which in turn is counted under the bandwidth usage. Even if you later close all these windows without viewing the videos, the bandwidth is still billed by your ISP because the data was actually downloaded to your computer."

So whether you watch it or not, bandwidth is still used. May make you reconsider pre-loading your tabs with HD video as that example just consumed almost 1 GB of bandwidth. Watch all the videos again and you just doubled that usage. Hmmm...time to change some habits for some if they want to keep the usage down. Now some people like the video so much, they watch it over and over again, me included. This now would be more worthwhile into making that video available offline to save on the bandwidth. Sadly, this also means my days of YouTube music playlists will be limited as the bandwidth used is much higher compared to a streaming radio service. Just another thing to consider.

Now this also goes for streaming services like Netflix. Sadly, depending on length of show and quality, services like Netflix could quickly chew up your allotted bandwidth. I could not find numbers on the bitrate but can only assume same or higher than YouTube but just a guess with a side of common sense. We use Netflix and enjoy the programs it does offer but will be limiting the usage for the next while until I can get how much bandwidth I've used. If I can see the last couple months, it will give me a good idea of how much it has added to our household's usage.

Tip #5: Use a clean homepage
Now for a lot of people, they have either their ISP's home page or pages like msn.ca or yahoo.ca set as their homepage. I personally use IGoogle. Now every time you fire up your browser, you could be loading a bunch of content you don't even read or need. If you don't need all that info, set you page to www.google.ca or if you use Firefox, use Firefox's Google homepage. For Firefox 4 users, you can use about:home in the address bar.

Tip #7: Use an Bandwidth Monitor
If you need to know how much you are using, you can turn to different options for bandwidth monitors. Firstly, you can check with your ISP what options they provide for tracking usage. My ISP doesn't provide it based on their site so I am waiting to find out how me as a consumer can find out. Some routers also show bandwidth usage but some can include internal network traffic in those numbers which doesn't count against your ISP's bandwidth (or does it? more on this in a sec). The advantage to this is if you have multiple computers in your household or business, you can get all the traffic.

If your router doesn't support it and you're a bit tech savvy, you could always use DDR-WRT and flash your router's firmware to give more options and features that may not be supported by your router's current firmware. If you're not tech savvy, do not try this as you could turn the router into a paper weight.

If your ISP or Router cannot get you that info, you can always use software on each computer to monitor. Drawback is you need to add up all the users to get the true number and doesn't count bandwidth used by gaming consoles accessing online content. Now there are both paid for and free options out there. 3 free options are NetWorx, NetLimiter 2 and a slightly older, now open source one called NetMeter. Up to you if you use any of these and I am not responsible for anything that may arise from using them nor can I assist you with setting up or configuring. please refer to their sites for assistance. One reason why I am not going to recommend one over the other as I do not use any of them as my router gives me the info I need.

Hopefully these tips will help you reduce your consumption of bandwidth or at least make you more aware of your usage. I am going to end this article by going back to my 2 statements about ISP modem/router combinations and internal traffic not counting against your ISP's allotted bandwidth when using modem/router combinations. That second statement might not be true.

The Possible Bigger Issue with Modem/router combinations
This little gem probably very few have heard about and most likely will find out the hard way. I want to shed some light on this and try and get more attention if this is the case. I've heard rumors that if you have a combo modem/router issued to you from your ISP, that device could be telling your ISP that the bandwidth from streaming videos or music or files from your PC/Xbox 360/PS3/Wii to another device within your internal network could be included under your allotted bandwidth! Now searching the net, I could not find anything related to back up this rumor until now. If you don't believe me, read this post by InsanityNow on Reddit. He was a Bell user who noticed his household was hitting the cap very quickly even when they were diligent in tracking and limiting the amount of bandwidth used downloading from the internet. Bell informed him that home network traffic is counted as internet bandwidth usage. ಠ_ಠ

So if this is true, we have an even bigger issue now as some ISP's will be charging you for transmitting your own data within your own network! Someone like me isn't affected as my router is separate from my modem but I can at least say Telus customers have this kind of setup and could be affected if they do the same as Bell. I would easily destroy my cap if I had that kind of setup. I do data recoveries and on average, recover between 100GB to 1000+GB per job. All of this gets backed up across my network to my data recovery PC. Depending on the nature of the recovery, it may all get transferred back onto that PC once fixed or a new PC (and once again, via network). I also do new PC setups and transfer data from the old PC to the new one. By the time I got a bill, it could be in the possible $1000's range.

So for ANYONE using a modem/router combo from their ISP, it is CYA (cover your ass) at this point and I would recommend calling your ISP and confirming if that is the case and get it in writing. This way, if down the road the tech you spoke to was towards the lower end of the evolutionary chain or not aware of it (like the technician InsanityNow dealt with at Bell), you have proof to cover yourself and get refunded (hopefully).

For those with no other choice, you can do what InsanityNow did and install a router and have your PC's connect to router first before connecting to ISP's router/modem combo. Because I do not have this kind of combo setup, I cannot confirm it myself through my own tests but maybe other users out there with this can test this and further confirm this is occurring. I would be very interested to hear back from anyone finding themselves in the same situation.

So that's that and hopefully you learned something. Tell your friends, family, co-workers. Strike up a conversation with people at the coffee shop or in line at the grocery store. Knowledge is power and to be informed allows for informed decisions. I'll end this with a cool rendition of Micheal Jackson's Smooth Criminal played on 2 cellos. Enjoy.