Can Browsers use bandwidth?

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scofield

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i rescently installed netlimiter 2 pro on 3 PCs... each with different Browsers (Google Chrome, Iexplorer, Firefox)

on the Iexplorer PC, a bit of browsing said it had used pretty much nothing,(0.226 Mbs) by itself, where as in total of 10 megabytes overall....

on the chrome PC, the same webpages visited said 15 megabytes overall and chrome itself had used about 5 megs just by itself, without the actual bandwidth used...

??? was it just a one off thing or does chrome use more bandwidth?
 
Browsers could auto update.. although you'd usually know if they did. They shouldn't use anything substantial by themselves unless you have adblocking on one.
 
I've read some browsers will sometimes start downloading links that it thinks you might click to help them load faster if you do click them. I think FF does this. Might be wrong though but I remember reading it somewhere.
 
knobshine said:
I've read some browsers will sometimes start downloading links that it thinks you might click to help them load faster if you do click them. I think FF does this. Might be wrong though but I remember reading it somewhere.
Click to expand...

Yip, it is called prefetching or precaching by different browsers....

Link prefetching is a draft standards compliant mechanism used by some web browsers, which uses browser idle time to download or prefetch documents that the user might visit in the near future. A web page provides a set of prefetching hints to the browser, and after the browser is finished loading the page, and after an idle time has passed, it begins silently prefetching specified documents, storing them in its cache. When the user visits one of the prefetched documents, it can be served up quickly out of the browser's cache.
Click to expand...


For those who feel wiki is not a great source for info - bite me! :)
 
LancelotSA said:
"Link prefetching is a draft standards compliant mechanism used by some web browsers, which uses browser idle time to download or prefetch documents that the user might visit in the near future. A web page provides a set of prefetching hints to the browser, and after the browser is finished loading the page, and after an idle time has passed, it begins silently prefetching specified documents, storing them in its cache. When the user visits one of the prefetched documents, it can be served up quickly out of the browser's cache".
Click to expand...

That sounds like a Telkom conspiracy: "Chow that man's cap - NOW!"
 
knobshine said:
I've read some browsers will sometimes start downloading links that it thinks you might click to help them load faster if you do click them. I think FF does this. Might be wrong though but I remember reading it somewhere.
Click to expand...

I know IE8 has a feature called Suggested Sites or something like that thats loads the next website it reckons you will browse too, but it can be disabled. The theory regarding updates sounds more true in your case. FF has done this with me alot - sometimes after closing the browser and starting it up again it first installs some update that it downloaded at some stage...i havent browsed the options extensively so i dont know if it can be turned off.
 
yeah shot for the help,,, it seems to have slowed down today,,, as in its not using as much,
 
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