4 Options To Save Bandwidth, Speed Up Web Browsing

There are certain situations where it may make sense to save as much bandwidth as possible while connected to the Internet. The most obvious is if you are limited to a certain amount of bandwidth per month, after which you are either cut off from the Internet or have to pay extra fees for all additional traffic that you have caused in a billing period.

A second if your Internet connection is not the fastest, to cut down on the time it takes before websites are completely loaded on the computer.

This guide looks at some of the options that you have at your disposal to speed up your Internet browsing and save bandwidth at the same time. Lets start.

1. Opera Turbo

Opera Turbo is a feature of the Opera web browser. It basically routes traffic through an Opera server where it is compressed before it is send to the user computer. The compressed web pages are considerably smaller, which saves bandwidth and speeds up the time it takes to fully render the page in the browser.

Opera Turbo offers two modes of operation. First an automatic mode which enables Opera Turbo whenever a slow network connection is detected by the browser, and second an always on mode so that the feature is activated all the time.

2. Faking the user agent

Many websites perform a user agent check during connection to determine the web browser and device a user is using to connect. Here on Ghacks for instance, you are either taken to the full site or the mobile site depending on the header.

The mobile site is often reduced to the bare minimum as the connection speed of mobile clients is on average lower than that of desktop systems. The advantage here is that mobile sites transfer a lot faster and use less bandwidth because of this. Faking the user agent of your desktop browser could provide you with these benefits. Keep in mind though that you may not be able to use all of a site’s functionality because of this.

This can usually be done quite easily with the help of browser extensions. Google Chrome users can for instance install the User-Agent Switcher in their browser, Firefox users the User Agent Switcher add-on for their browser.

3. Disable Features

A third possibility would be to disable features on some or all websites to save bandwidth. You could for instance disable all plugins to block plugin contents from being loaded at all. That’s for instance useful on sites that make use of Flash contents.

The options do not end here though. Most browsers let you disable images for instances or JavaScript to reduce the amount of data that is transferred further.

Google Chrome users can for instance block images, JavaScript and plugins in the browser’s settings.

Extensions like Adblock Plus or NoScript can also block some page elements from being loaded.

4. Disable Prefetching

Prefetching technology loads web contents that you may visit to speed up the page rendering time if you do. If you do not visit the prefetched web pages, bandwidth has been wasted.

Chrome: Enter chrome:\\flags into the address bar of the browser and hit enter. Make sure the following features are disabled:

Disable hyperlink auditingPreload Instant Search

Enter chrome://chrome/settings in the address bar, tap on enter and make sure the following features are not enabled:

Predict network actions to improve page load performanceAutomatically send usage statistics and crash reports to Google

Firefox: Enter about:config into the address bar and hit the return key. First time users need to confirm that they want to continue. Filter for the term network.prefetch-next and double-click it to set it to false if it is set to true.

Enjoyed the article?: Then sign-up for our free newsletter or RSS feed to kick off your day with the latest technology news and tips, or share the article with your friends and contacts on Facebook or Twitter. Save Network Bandwidth
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Bandwidth Caps for Time Warner Users ? About the Author:Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News Back in 2005. He is passionate about all things tech and knows the Internet and computers like the back of his hand. You can follow Martin on Facebook or Twitter.Author: Martin Brinkmann, Friday March 2, 2012 -
Tags:save bandwidth, speed up internet

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Limit The Upload Bandwidth Of Windows Programs

I noticed yesterday that the popular live streaming software Sopcast was using all of my computer’s upload bandwidth. The program uses P2P technologies to distribute the live stream to all connected users, just like the newly announced Bittorrent Live does.

Using all of my computer’s upload speed, 10 Mbit in total, put a lot of strain on other programs that used the Internet connection (I discovered this with the help of Netspeed Monitor).
This can cause problems if you share the connection with other users, or run programs in the background that require a certain amount of upload speed to function properly and without lags. Maxing out your upload bandwidth can also cause problems with your ISP as they may limit your connection or ask you to upgrade to an account that is more expensive.

I first tried to find an option in Sopcast itself to limit the upload bandwidth, but there was none unfortunately. Research on the Internet revealed a handful of commercial programs, and solutions for Linux, to limit the upload bandwidth of a program. There seems to be only one free program for recent versions of Windows that can limit the upload of selected programs.

Netbalancer Free lets you limit the upload and download speed of all processes running on the system. You can read my previous review here: NetBalancer, Internet Traffic Monitoring, Controlling Software.

Here, I’m only describing how you can utilize the program to limit a program’s bandwidth use under Windows. NetBalancer displays a list of all processes running on the system on startup. Each process is listed with its name and the current download and upload rate. You can now limit the rate of a process by right-clicking it, and selecting one of the available options from the context menu.

You can select one of the pre-defined values (low, normal or high), block the program completely from sending data, or use the limit option to set a custom limit in Kilobytes per second. Once you have configured the upload limit, you will immediately notice that the program won’t go over that limit anymore when NetBalancer is running.

I configured Sopcast’s upload limit to 500 KB/s, which resolved all the underlying issues I had with the program before.

Enjoyed the article?: Then sign-up for our free newsletter or RSS feed to kick off your day with the latest technology news and tips, or share the article with your friends and contacts on Facebook or Twitter. Limit Upload and Download Bandwidth
How Much Bandwidth Do You Need?
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Bitmeter II Bandwidth Meter About the Author:Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News Back in 2005. He is passionate about all things tech and knows the Internet and computers like the back of his hand. You can follow Martin on Facebook or Twitter.Author: Martin Brinkmann, Sunday February 19, 2012 -
Tags:limit upload speed, sopcast

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