( Tips n' Tricks ) Reducing Data Transfer while Surfing

[abhishekkulkarni]

This Tutorial is for all BSNL DataOne Home Plan users who are tensed due to the unjustifiable 'Data Transfer Cap' concept which is supposed to be brought in to effect soon.

In fact I began thinking of ways & means of reducing Data Transfer while you surf as a result of bickering friends , people who used to sit on the Net for an average of 5/6 hours per day.

To make you realise the gravity of the situation let me give an example --

I "just" opened yahoomail.com , checked my inbox , opened two mails composed & sent one mail .
That's it.
When I checked DU Meter the data transferred was 20.5 MB.
Now this when compared to a measly cap of 150Mb/day is bulls**t.

I am considering Internet Explorer 6.0 as the Browser and WinXP Pro patched up with SP2 as the OS in this Tutorial as it is the most widely used combination of an OS & a Browser.

And well , a lot of tips mentioned which are mentioned here will tell you to disable various eye - candy features in different software.For people who do not want to forgo that well, there's no way out.

So here are the few Tips which I am sure will go a long way in helping you save your precious MegaBytes-





All of us come across a lot of advertisements while surfing in the form of pop - up adds , most of which are pretty useless.They hog a lot of bandwidth and also are very heavy in terms of size.To prevent them from being downloaded you can always use Third - Party Programs which are available everywhere.But I have experienced that the inbuilt Pop - up blocker in WinXP used in conjunction with the Windows Firewall gives the best results.

Turn on Pop-up Blocker through IE.To do this go to -

Tools -> Pop - up Blocker -> Turn On.

Also change the Default setting from "Medium" to "High".






All of us always visit a few particularly common pages each time we surf.For me those pages are Yahoomail.com,Thinkdigit.com/forum,Gmail.com and my Blog.So instead of downloading these pages every time we surf why not make those pages available offline so that the amount of data transfer is reduced.

In IE to make an Web Page available offline go to -

Favourites -> Add to Favourites -> & check "Make available Offline".

*img41.imageshack.us/img41/1981/makeoffline0hh.jpg






By default Windows XP downloads updates automatically when it senses an active Internet connection without prompting the User for doing so ( very irritable ). This does not make any sense when you can order the updates (licensed users) CD's for free from Microsoft.To turn off automatic updating go to -

Right click on "My Computer" -> Properties -> Updates -> uncheck "Download updates automatically"

Also do the same for software like Norton Antivirus etc.....

( You can always get the updates from mag CD's , friends etc... )



Media Players like WMA 9,10 RealOne Player etc download the codecs which are not installed on your PC automatically.In fact WMA also downloads the updates automatically.So to disable this go to -

For Windows Media Player -

Tools -> Options -> Player tab -> Uncheck everything you see over there.

*images5.theimagehosting.com/wmacodecs.jpg

Now while installing Real One Player -

When the window for selecting your Connection Speed appears , check "I do not have an Internet Connection" located in the leftmost bottom corner.

*images5.theimagehosting.com/realp.jpg





Always install a good free & easy to use Firewall such as Tiny Personal Firewall ( available on Digit CD's )
Using a firewall ensures that no program unknowlingly accesses the internet.This acquires importance especially in case of broadband connections wherein the connection is always on once the modem is turned on.So when you are using your PC for doing anything other than surfing just cut all access to the net through the Firewall and voila ! you are secure .

*images5.theimagehosting.com/tinycut.jpg





This one is for the extreme downloaders , Net junkies who want to save their transfers to the maximum extent.
Prevent all multimedia items like images,sounds,animations,videos,flash objects etc... from being displayed by just unchecking everything here -

Internet Options -> Advanced -> Multimedia.


But believe me this alone cuts down Data transfer by 80%.Because only the text is displayed which is of a negligible size ( KBytes ).

However it is difficult to adjust to pages without those familiar buttons & images and it takes a lot of time.But then our purpose of reducing data transfer is served to the fullest extent.

*images5.theimagehosting.com/iemulti.jpg



Note - I couldn't post any pics for WinXP as it crashed today.

 

[navjotjsingh]

Excellent Article and great finds.

 

[hyde]

i recommend use a good firewall like zonealarm and u can monitor whatever is going to connect the net.

and in ur du meter's option menu select "dialup connections only" instead of "all interfaces" at the network interface to monitor option.

 

[selva1966]

Fire fox with adblock will also help. But you should be ruthless with adblock when using it.

Now, for example, I am only getting 55% of sify home page. All the ads are blocked.

 

[it_waaznt_me]

Nice post .. Though I would like to add some clarifications ...

Turning on Pop up stopper wont reduce the bandwidth .. Cauz pop up stopper works on the Client side .. They edit the web page being displayed and remove the pop up displaying codes as well as ads displaying codes ...
You can do this by editing the Hosts file though .. Set the adservers to ip address localhost or 0.0.0.0 so that whenever any ad banner will be queried it will searched to your own system ultimately which wont be found but as the file wont be downloaded from Internet, your bandwidth will be saved ...

And yeah .. For those Windows Update setting set the option to Notify me but don't automatically download or install them ...

And add those options to Quicktime too .. and many players use services like FreeDB for fetching CD info ... you can also disable them ..

 

[abhishekkulkarni]

Nice post .. Though I would like to add some clarifications ...

Turning on Pop up stopper wont reduce the bandwidth .. Cauz pop up stopper works on the Client side .. They edit the web page being displayed and remove the pop up displaying codes as well as ads displaying codes ...
You can do this by editing the Hosts file though .. Set the adservers to ip address localhost or 0.0.0.0 so that whenever any ad banner will be queried it will searched to your own system ultimately which wont be found but as the file wont be downloaded from Internet, your bandwidth will be saved ...

Thanks Batty.

 

[Charley]

I was waiting for a post on this, finally its come.

Of 1 GB , now remains only 500mb till date..

Anyway I can use this post to monitor from now on.

Tka and cheers

 

[Charley]

All of us come across a lot of advertisements while surfing in the form of pop - up adds , most of which are pretty useless.They hog a lot of bandwidth and also are very heavy in terms of size.To prevent them from
....
.......

Firstly regdg pop up blocker, pls gimme a small freeware softie which works with IE6 and WIN98 SE.

Secondly, regdg making pages available as favorites, does it work on IE6, WIN98SE, i mean the automatic update of the site?

Thirdly, the modem distributed byBSNL has a strong firewall inbuilt which I have tried and is really good. Ayway pls gimme a download link for the Tiny Personal softie.

[Edited Batty]Spare the dialup users .. And what was it that you wanted to quote ???

 

[anandk]

try Proxomitron. its effective but difficult to configure. It operates by filtering and transforming all your Web pages on the fly. As a result you can not only stop pop-ups but pop-unders, ads, flash animations, status bar scrollers and just about anything else. download it here *castlecops.com/files/ProxN45.exe
for info click *castlecops.com/Proxomitron.html

else use maxthon (ie based tabbed browser). got an excellant pop-up/contentfilter/ad-blocker. blocks auto popups, web ads, web dialog
boxes, float ads, etc.

superadblocker is another effective one...but its not freeware.
*www.superadblocker.com/

 

[abhishekkulkarni]

All of us come across a lot of advertisements while surfing in the form of pop - up adds , most of which are pretty useless.They hog a lot of bandwidth and also are very heavy in terms of size.To prevent them from
....
.......

Firstly regdg pop up blocker, pls gimme a small freeware softie which works with IE6 and WIN98 SE.

Secondly, regdg making pages available asfavorites, does it work on IE6, WIN98SE, i mean the automatic update of the site?

Thirdly, the modem distributed byBSNL has a strong firewall inbuilt which I have tried and is really good. Ayway pls gimme a download link for the Tiny Personal softie :wink

I presume that by favourites you mean to imply whether the pages can be stored offline.
Yes they can & it does not depend on the version of Windows as it is a feature of IE.
And yes IE 6 does support offline webpage synchronisation.

Will give the download link on checking whether it is freeware or not.

It is also included on the June 2002 Digit CD ( Internet Solutions ).

 

[Charley]

I presume that by favourites you mean to imply whether the pages can be stored offline.
Yes they can & it does not depend on the version of Windows as it is a feature of IE.
And yes IE 6 does support offline webpage synchronisation.

Ok , so it gets updated automatically hun??

By favorites I meant that the page which I set in the offline option should be updated as and when I log on the Internet.

 

[abhishekkulkarni]

Yes it does get updated automatically , but only if a newer version of the webpage exists than the one which was previously stored offline.

 

[Charley]

Will give the download link on checking whether it is freeware or not.

It is also included on the June 2002 Digit CD ( Internet Solutions ).

Did u get the info on the Tiny Firewall softie ?

 

[paid]

I suggest all in one 'Avant Browser' with Tabbed Windows, Picture Blocker, Disables Flash, selective Popup Blocker, ad Blocker, History cleaner and with RSS Feeder and FREE. To me its a worth try

 

[abhishekkulkarni]

It is also included on the June 2002 Digit CD ( Internet Solutions ).

Yes I checked it . It is free for home use. The download link is -

*www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,8051,00.asp

 

[Charley]

@ Indyan - Who gave u that wong information?

If it wud have been so I wouldnt stick here with my 256 kpbs connection.

The 1000 rs scheme, I'd guess is only 2GB or less.

 

[abhishekkulkarni]

Nice info
But i feel that Ie's caching mechanism isnt very good.So a browser with a better caching mechanism may use less bandwidth esp while revisiting pgaes with picutres
There is one worry with Firefox too.And that is that Firefox prefetches data thus using up bandwidth.This can be a major factor.

If you want to be drastic u can use the option view cached images only(in opera).

Also softwares like onspeed may help a great deal as it can reduce the size of pages to something like 1/5th depending upon or compression settings.But it costs a lil less than Rs200 per month.

Bsnl has a 4gb plan for around 1000 bucks.Go for that if possible

No dude the Transfer Limit for that plan is only 2GB.

And as far as the Caching ability is concerned it is pretty good if not awesome.

And not all use Firefox.

 

[Charley]

If you want to be drastic u can use the option view cached images only(in opera).

And as far as the Caching ability is concerned it is pretty good if not awesome.

What kinda size can one save on opening up webpages say for eg. yahoo ? 8)

 

[abhishekkulkarni]

Yeah conicidentally I had calculated how much space Yahoo.com eats up using DU Meter.

I checked DU Meter's reading before starting and then opened up Yahoo.com & guess what the reading increased by exactly 4.1 MB.

Now that's a lot of transfer considering that u are opening only the homepage isn't it?

What do you think?

I suppose it's probably due to the large amount of pics & animations which are included in the homepage.

 

[Charley]

@Abish - Did u disable the options in the IE options menu with regard to Multimedia. Try it and see , it reduces drastically as it doesnt show those pics, etc.