Is there a rule of thumb or a tool I can use to determine how much data one is transferring through certain uses of the internet? Email only versus browsing versus browsing with videos versus music downloads versus watching Netflix movies, etc?
I’ve used netlimiter in the past, and it has some capability to do this. It will track how much data each individual program uses, which can get you partly there, but on its own it can’t tell you how much your browser was on Youtube versus browsing elsewhere.
In general, however, video will take up the largest portion of bandwidth by far. Youtube video is typically more compressed than what you see on Netflix, so here Netflix is taking the bigger share. Music downloads will usually be smaller than any video, but it could be responsible for a very big share if you, say, leave internet radio on all day. Browsing typically doesn’t use much, unless you’re looking at a lot of pictures. And lastly, barring any huge file attachments, email is insignificant compared to anything else.
My WAG based on my personal usage patterns each month:
~10 gigs for streaming internet video (using Hulu and the like)
~1 gig for miscellany on Youtube and other little silly internet videos
~500 mb for audio downloads (mostly podcasts, don’t listen to internet radio much)
~500 mb for other internet browsing (probably less?)
~50 mb for email, mostly due to a few big attachments
World of warcraft averages 7 megabytes/hr.
Thanks!