Is 500GB per month sufficient for:

4 hours of listening to music via Windows Media Player per day (I tried to get the sibling to stop using it, but she won't be told!)

Upto 25 hours of online gaming per month

up to 6 hours a day assorted browsing

downloading up to 4 albums per month from iTunes.

It probably is, but I've got no reference to go on on current consumption.......

Which provider is that?

On a 1mb line, I was hitting anywhere between 50-80gb a month with almost constant downloading, so I'd be surprised if you got near 500gb!

I think 500gb will do you just fine!! Not even my massive porn catalogue pushes my downloads to those limits

Are you sure bout 500GB being the right figure?

That's 100 complete DVD images which would take 26 days continuous downloading on a 2 meg line.

500Gb per month is approximately 200Kb/s download constantly, 24x7. Which is pretty much impossible for a home user

So yeah, 500Gb is plenty, even for someone who downloads movies & MP3s all the time

Which ISP out of interest? And what's the speed?

I think an extra zero must have crept into the post somewhere. 50gb a month is much more likely and unless you download DVD images it will be more than enough

Thats upsetting me that is....

Im getting upgraded to a 2mb line soon, with a paltry 15gb/month up AND down....

considering theres 3 heavy users in the house, and our current half meg is maxed out constantly.... :(

UK Online, 8mb broadband........

Sounds like UKOnline 8000 or similar...

Kansalis - are your figures correct? When I was using P2P I was quite often getting up to 120kbs 24/7.... and was always under 80gb a month in bandwidth...

on further analysis.........

I'm too far from the exchange to get 8mb..........would max out at 4mb........to count on at a real-world speed of half that......

SO

2-4mb connection, 500gb a month (in practice, it might as well be uncapped from the figures you're quoting me here) for

Ahhh - I was beaten to the punch somewhat in the time I took to compose a reply

For what it's worth, plus net are going to up speeds soon. They'll put everyone onto the fatest speed their line will support fairly soon (upto 2mb max currently imposed), and once the system is upgraded by BT (trials starting now), up to a maximum of 8mb, if your line is up to it.

Pricing will be based on usage - a combination of metered bandwidth in the day, and "unlimited" at night.

http://www.adslguide.org.uk/newsarchive.asp?item=2098 has more info... for what I pay at the moment for a 1mb line (

Kansalis - are your figures correct? When I was using P2P I was quite often getting up to 120kbs 24/7.... and was always under 80gb a month in bandwidth...

200 Kb/s

12,000 Kb per min

720,000 Kb per hour

17,280,000 Kb per day

518,400,000 Kb per month (30 days)

or 518,400 Mb

or 518.4 Gb

For the pedants, it's actually 190.26 Kb/s for 500Gb per month, based on a non leap-year (yes, I'm bored at work).

Just an FYI, you will find that all ISPs measure a Gb as 1000Mb, not 1024Mb. So for those of us on lower bandwidth restrictions, it actually makes a fair bit of difference. That's a whole different can of worms though

For the pedants' date=' it's actually 190.26 Kb/s for 500Gb per month, based on a non leap-year (yes, I'm bored at work).

Just an FYI, you will find that all ISPs measure a Gb as 1000Mb, not 1024Mb. So for those of us on lower bandwidth restrictions, it actually makes a fair bit of difference. That's a whole different can of worms though [/quote']

Glad you mentioned that, because I AM THAT PEDANT!!

In all seriously, even if i could get the suggested maximum bandwidth for my line of 4mb, I do wonder if it's actually worth it on balance.

My 1mb re-grade comes through in a month or less. I'm uncapped.

Technical support, where actually required, has, generally, been helpful.

I might consider re-grading to 2mb, as that's a definite 2mb connection for

Well yesterday was going so well...

Saw to Bm's have a traffic light GP then cut each other up brake hard and the little 1.4 tortoise expolits them both

Then today I get a note saying BT are useless and my line is to noisy for 2mb dsl...that fir tree is sooo dead when I get home.

And now Unfortunately, UK Online Broadband 8000 is not currently available in your area.

I'm stuck on 512dsl :( Going to try the 1mb dsl later...then I might have to think about cable....shivers because every other house in the area has an ntl cable box except ours, I went dsl for a reason

200 Kb/s

12' date='000 Kb per min

720,000 Kb per hour

17,280,000 Kb per day

518,400,000 Kb per month (30 days)

or 518,400 Mb

or [b']518.4 Gb[/b]

For the pedants, it's actually 190.26 Kb/s for 500Gb per month, based on a non leap-year (yes, I'm bored at work).

Just an FYI, you will find that all ISPs measure a Gb as 1000Mb, not 1024Mb. So for those of us on lower bandwidth restrictions, it actually makes a fair bit of difference. That's a whole different can of worms though

Working backwards (figures below are rounded, but not in calculations):

Assume 365/12 for days per month.

500 gb/month

500 / ( 365/12 ) = 16.4gb a day

16.4 / 24 = 0.685 gb an hour

0.685 * 1024 = 701mb an hour

701 / 60 = 11.7 mb a minute

11.7 / 60 = 0.195 mb a second

0.195 * 1024 = 199 kb a second (kilobytes)

speeds are in kilobits, not kilobytes, so

199 * 8 = 1596kbps

Rather than downloading at 200kbps, you'd need to get to 1,596kbps to max out the 500gb? Discuss?

(Sorry, feeling pedantic too!)

Who measures speeds in Kilobits? The download windows in IE, BitTorrent etc are all in bytes, kilobytes & megabytes

I was working on the ISPs' measurements of 1000's instead of 1024's. So in theory, we're both right

Oh, if you want to be really silly & work out the figures using the ISP measurements, then work backwards using 'real' 1024-based download speeds it would be 185.8 Kb/s download speeds....

Any oter ISP's offering a 4mb uncapped/ridiculously high limit service for reasonable pennies?

Try this http://www.bulldogbroadband.com/

Rather than downloading at 200kbps, you'd need to get to 1,596kbps to max out the 500gb? Discuss?

Thinking about this sentence, it should say:

You'd need to max out a 1.596kbps (i.e. a 1.5mb connection) constantly in order to hit 500gb in a month...

It's unlikely you'd be able to do that (at 200Kb/sec as Kansalis rightly said) for most purposes - p2p downloads fluctuate between nothing and full speed... maybe leeching from the binaries newsgroups from your ISP might get close