Xbox live and broadband allowance

jonnyb1978

Recently i have set up xbox live gold membership for my son and was just curious of the amount of broadband allowance it uses... I recieved an email saying im nearly at my allowance, being 10GB a month with plusnet. Since the 17th Jan until now i have used 9.66 GB.

Granted while its still novelty my son has been on it everyday at some length. He has downloaded a couple of demos which stick out on my usage summary. A 2gb and 1.6gb used on seperate days.

My querie is normal everyday use. For example today i have used 450mb after 8am as before its free and shows in a seperate column. My son goes to school at 8.30am and incidentally the xbox has broken and was sent to microsoft this afternoon so for the last few days he has only been using it to chat to friends etc not for online gaming. Surely he can not of used 450mb in half an hour at most. I use the laptop but only for browsing. No downloads, no music, no utube just simple checking emails and normal websites.
On previous saturdays and sundays the amount used has been between 400mb and 580mb. So i do not get how 450mb has been used today.

Really puzzled about todays usage. So how much does the xbox live normally use? Guess im going to have to keep more of an eye on this.

debitcardmayhem

Sorry but the 10gb includes upload too. But is your router secured ?
Look here and select view internet activities , should give you a clue at least.

KiwiCrazy

Only 10Gb a month? that is useless, I was with PlusNet a few years back and they gave my truley unlimited net usage.....If he watches YouTube videos then that will eat up the bandwidth, especially the HD videos.

Tropez

It is very hard to say how much of your data allowance will be used by Xbox live because the Xbox does all sorts of things when online.

I recall reading somewhere on the Xbox website that Xbox Live averages 10-15mb downloaded per hour and 5-10mb per hour uploaded.

It's worth bearing in mind that the Xbox can be set to download something even when it is switched off so if your son was downloading a game or demo or some other content and then turned the Xbox off it would continue its download.

JasX

10GB is virtually nothing, basic gaming will easily use 30-50 MB per hour, that does NOT include downloading games and demo's (2-8 GB at a time) recieving updates/patches for existing games (200-800 MB a pop, can be as frequent as weekly) and anything else you do on top of basic browsing. 10GB is a tiny limit designed for say, your elderly aunt who barely knows how to turn the PC on, it is totally unsuitable if you want to 'use' the internet. you could burn thru your 10GB in under 4-6 hours of watching iplayer in HD

mttylad

Apart from upgrading to a higher bandwidth connection - I would suggest that ALL downloads are scheduled for times outside of the Plusnet peak times.

Although there are no scheduling facilities on the Xbox for this, so he will have to do this manually himself.
I.E. only download at weekends.

The xbox cannot download anything when it is switched off I.E. all lights off and no noise coming from it.
It will need to be still active to continue downloading.

Tropez

mttylad wrote: »

The xbox cannot download anything when it is switched off I.E. all lights off and no noise coming from it.
It will need to be still active to continue downloading.

Not true, unless you're referring to the Xbox being disconnected at the mains.

You can Enable or Disable Background Downloading in the Startup and Shutdown menu of the Settings panel in My Xbox. If this feature is enabled the Xbox, upon being turned off, will continue to use a small amount of power (although produce no noise) to download anything in the user's download queue. The power light will light on and off slowly and briefly while this is occurring. The Xbox itself, however, is not usable unless switched back on.

Whether it is standard practice or not, this was enabled by default on my Xbox, purchased brand new, a few months ago.