My Real-World Data Usage is Backwards from Most

[Jason Dunn]

<p>We've talked a great deal about the unfolding data usage caps from wired ISPs over the past year here on Digital Home Thoughts, so I thought I might be interesting to share my data usage as measured by my ISP here in Western Canada, <a href="http://www.shaw.ca" target="_blank">Shaw Communications</a>. Here's my usage from December 2010 through until July 2011:</p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com//dht/auto/1311025565.usr1.png" style="border: 1px solid #d2d2bb;" /></p><p>I'd guess that an average person would consume far less bandwidth, but also be the reverse of my pattern; they'd have more download usage and less upload usage. Why do I use up so much upstream bandwidth? No, it's not torrents - I've been slowly but surely adding data via <a href="http://www.crashplan.com" target="_blank">Crashplan</a> for my off-site backup (I'm up to 620 GB or so now) and last week I uploaded my 100 GB music collection to Amazon's Cloud Drive service. Now that I've uploaded pretty much all my data to Crashplan, and all my music is in the cloud, I should be using less upstream data.</p><p>What does your data usage look like? Are you bumping up against your cap (if you have one), or are you comfortably within it?</p>

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

My own stats are something like 4:1 downloads to uploads, and generally I average 50GB a month.

[Gordo]

I am also using CrashPlan, I think I signed up around the same time as you. I need just short of a tera byte uploaded, and it has completed about 60%, still showing 8+ months to complete. I think my problem is a slow ADSL upload speed, but I can't complain because I get the internet for free, legally!

I really wish I lived in the US so I could take advantage of the Crashplan hardisk exchange process.

With the Crashplan backup running I am similar to you, but on a much smaller scale.

[Jason Dunn]

I think my problem is a slow ADSL upload speed, but I can't complain because I get the internet for free, legally!

Yeah, you're probably getting 1mbps at most, so that's going to take a veeeeery long time to upload 1 TB of data. Where are you getting Internet for free?

[Gordo]

Where are you getting Internet for free?

Because my wife works from home for the Federal Government, they are providing the internet, so your tax dollars are hard at work uploading my files :)

It's actually half the speed you quoted :(

[Jason Dunn]

It's actually half the speed you quoted :(

Wow. I don't think I'd even try an online backup with 512kbps upstream. Or maybe only my ultra-critical files...you have a lot of patience. :)