Browsing Frugally Without Wasting Bandwidth?

forrestm writes "At home, my internet connection is limited to 1GB / month before I have to pay extra. At my university, I'm charged around 2.5c per megabyte. I rarely download anything big, but I often go through a large amount of bandwidth by simply browsing around. For example, when I play a YouTube video, click a link, and then return to the video, the whole video reloads. When I read some websites, such as BoingBoing.net or Cnet.com, my status bar shows a whole lot of data being transferred through other domains. Some pages seem to send/receive data at certain intervals for the duration of my visit. When I begin to enter a search in Firefox's search bar, a list of suggestions is automatically downloaded. In addition to this, Firefox often requests internet access of its own accord, even though I have automatic updating turned off. All this is costing me! How do I stop unsolicited use of my internet connection? How do I go about not wasting bandwidth like this?"

Comments

No Script

[Coldeagle]

If you're a FireFox user I would recommend the No Script and adblock add on. That way you're not actually loading anything unless you specify.

Re:No Script

[NoobixCube]

I find No Script to be a bit of a pain, usually, because I seem to spend half of my time allowing things that I need. Adblock, however, is the only thing that keeps the internet usable for me when I exceed my download limit. I get shaped down to 56k instead of my usual 10 Mb/s - a very painful fall. Adblock lets me load pages in far less than half the time it would take without it. It's shocking how much crap is foisted on us at our own expense, really.

To quote Adam Savage:

[Weaselmancer]

At home, my internet connection is limited to 1GB / month before I have to pay extra.

"Well there's your problem."

Re:To quote Adam Savage:

[Anonymous Coward]

There are two kinds of problems in this world:
Those you can do something about, and those you can not.

Soulskill did not say so, but I am willing to bet he is from South Africa (as I am). I will therefore answer in this context, if the context is wrong, apologies.

The 1Gb limit is fairly typical as is the charging per bandwidth by your university. Even if you go to the library, you still have to log in and you are charged.

The reasons for this are numerous (and I am not going to claim that I can give a fair analysis in such a short space) but it includes the facts that
* South Africa get's its international connectivity from the States and Europe. So there are seriously long cables that run to serve RELATIVELY small population of internet users.
* There is an effective monopoly (or by now duopoly) on bandwidth provision (and yes, this is being fought)
* South Africa (and most other third world countries) needs to pay for it connectivity to other countries (but why not the other way around?)

This landscape is changing, extra cables are being laid under sea, SLOWLY the market is being deregulated so we can look forward to some cheaper bandwidth in future. In the meantime, these are the cards we are being dealt.

So before giving an answer as simplistic as this (and being marked insightful 5!!!!) consider that the world is larger.

I hope this does add insight.

Flame away.

Squid.

[bmo]

Install a cache server. Like Squid.

http://www.squid-cache.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squid_cache /thread.

--
BMO

WTF!?!?!

[rts008]

Dude, all you have to do when visiting a site to be white-listed is is :
1. visit the site.
2. navigate your curser to the 'S' with the red circle and slash (in the bottom right corner of FF), and choose "allow this page". If you have not set NoScript to refresh the page withe new settings (Windows= 'tools'> Add-ons> highlight (left-click/hover on NoScript in the 'add-ons' dialog box) NoScript, click on the 'Options' button> select 'General' tab> checkmark the box labeled 'Automatically reload affected pages when permissions change.'

3. ???

4. PROFIT!!!

For extra credit,try the "appearance' tab (Tools>Add-ons>NoScript>Options.

Personally, mine is set at:

(long story, short version) "Show..."
"Status bar labeled" == unchecked
"Full Domain" == unchecked
"Full Address" == unchecked

It provides a nice experience online for me, along with control over which parts of a web page can load.

When in doubt, you can always try "temporarily allow XYZ.org/com/net/edu".

P.S. I am currently having to settle for a Windows machine against my choice, but the above info is the same under Linux and Firefox, except it is accessed from "Edit">"Preferences">....

Re:That's lousy

[forrestm]

I should mention I'm in New Zealand, which unfortunately is behind most of the world in terms of internet

Re:That's lousy

[MoonBuggy]

I'm still amazed to hear that your university is charging you such a high rate for access (well, actually I'm surprised they're charging you at all for on-campus access); obviously connections differ depending on where you are, and the number of cables from New Zealand to the rest of the world has an impact on that, but having had a quick look around it seems that even a fairly pessimistic bit of number crunching at NZ prices has your university paying less than 1/10 of the cost they're passing on to you. Has anyone complained about this? Do they provide a reason for the inflated costs?

Re:That's lousy

[billcopc]

$40/month isn't the sort of amount you want to be spending on non-necessary things like internet access.

OUT! Leave your geek card at the security desk.

How can you honestly call the internet "non-necessary" ? Yes, there's a lot of garbage on here, but how could any tech-savvy individual dismiss the evolutionary leap of the global information network ? Computers and the internet are the more significant achievements of our century, because they unlock a million other uses and are the first step toward unifying humankind.

What, you think all this man-vs-man, you-don't-know-what-I-know hate-breeding business is the path to enlightenment ? *cough* Wehell... thanks for nothing!