SA’s biggest bandwidth hogs: how they burn through TBs of data

Many South African ADSL users consume well over 500GB of data per month, with some people exceeding the 1TB mark. It is often assumed that downloading content such as TV series and movies is behind the high data usage, but this is only part of the story.

MyBroadband asked some of South Africa’s biggest uncapped ADSL data users what is behind their high bandwidth consumption.

MyBroadband gathered information in two ways – asking the biggest bandwidth users identified by Internet Service Providers, and getting feedback from MyBroadband members who consume over 500GB of data per month.

The feedback showed that many high end users’ data consumption is for downloading movies and TV series. There are also many people using their connection in an office environment and even to run wireless ISPs.

The standard bandwidth hog

Many high end uncapped ADSL users burn through hundreds of gigabytes by downloading TV series and movies.

What was telling is that most ‘bandwidth hogs’ use Usenet (aka newsgroups, news servers, NZBs) to download movies and TV series, instead of BitTorrent services.

“Anyone on ADSL that is halfway awake is rolling with some news server variation – IS NS, SABNZB or Sickbeard. And if needed, then use Torrents and Peerblock as a backup solution and for obscure stuff,” said one high end user.

Another large group of high end users consume their data using media streaming services like Netflix and Hulu, combined with news servers to download content.

Many high end users reported that they download or stream high definition (HD) content, which can be bandwidth heavy.

Another service which contributed to high data usage is gaming. Many users said that their Steam downloads can run into many gigabytes per month.

“I use Steam and Origin for gaming, and I prefer buying digital copies. Depending on the month I download between 20GB and 50GB of updates and new games a month,” one user explained.

What was particularly interesting is that many high end users preferred to use business uncapped service which do not have any shaping or throttling.

Using uncapped ADSL to run a small ISP

One high end uncapped ADSL user said that he uses the service as backhaul bandwidth for his Wireless Internet Service Provider (WISP) operations.

According to this WISP owner, uncapped ADSL provides him with the cheapest way to provide his users with Internet access.

In this case the user saved money by using uncapped ADSL connections for backhaul bandwidth instead of more expensive leased line options.

Uncapped ADSL office accounts abused

Two of the other “bandwidth hogs” run the uncapped accounts in office environments. What is surprising is that the account holders had no idea that their bandwidth usage was very high, and why it was so high.

The one subscriber holder used his uncapped ADSL account in an office with 12 staff members, while the other was not willing to disclose how many users used the service.

In one of the offices there was a VPN service running at maximum speed for 24 hours a day, which most likely supported P2P services over a tunnel.

The other office had 3 computers running P2P services throughout the day.

The account holders were not aware that these services were running on their networks.

In one case the account holder asked for a report on the activity on his account, which he wanted to use to discipline staff abusing the office’s Internet service.

The other account holder was also thankful for more insight into what was slowing down his Internet line.

Both these users were happy to hear that they can save money by moving to an uncapped ADSL account where P2P and other non-business services are blocked during business hours.

More on ADSL data usage

SA’s biggest ADSL bandwidth hogs

The world’s biggest bandwidth hog?