Estimate Your Web Usage

Web

General web surfing consists of 2-3 page requests a minute.

Basic sites:
Mostly text based, average about 100 KB per page-view.

Multimedia Sites:
With videos, advertising, interactivity, etc. Average about 320 KB per page-view. This is just for viewing the page not interacting with page elements.

Email

Text-only:
Email without attachments is estimated at 15 KB per message.

Emails with attachments:
require more data usage. The average email that has an attachment is estimated at 100 KB per message. This is an estimated value as attachments can vary greatly in size.

Video

Most major videos sites like Hulu, Youtube, and Netflix use a variable rate when streaming. This rate is determined by the settings the user chooses as well as their internet connection.

Full Length Videos: (Netflix, Hulu)
Standard Definition (SD) video is streamed at 480 kbps. Estimated .21 GB per hour.
High Definition (HD) video is streamed at 2500 kbps. Estimated 1.07 GB per hour.

Note: Some HD Netflix videos can be streamed at 3800 kbps. Estimated 1.6 GB per hour.

Short Length Videos: (YouTube, CNN)
Standard Definition (SD) video is streamed at 480 kbps. Estimated .21 GB per hour.
High Definition (HD) video is streamed at 1100 kbps. Estimated .47 GB per hour.

Music

Streaming:
A constant stream at 128 kbps is estimated at 56.25 MB per hour.

Downloads:
Typical 3-minute songs are estimated be 3.7 MB in size. Higher-fidelity songs will require more data usage.

Gaming

MMO’s (Massive Multiplayer Online): (WoW, Call of duty)
1 hour of online play uses an estimated 20 MB per hour.This is value doesn’t take into account downloading the game, patches, or third party add-ons.

Online Games(Facebook, Flash Gaming Sites)
Facebook and other online games use an estimated 10 MB per hour.

Social Sites and Chat

Social Sites: (Facebook, Twitter)
Bandwidth usage of social sites can vary greatly depending on what you are doing. 1 hour on Facebook for average status updates and surfing is estimated at about 10 MB. Uploading and viewing lots of pictures, playing videos, application, and games will greatly increase the usage.

Chat
Ten lines of text-based chat are estimated to need 10,000 KB. An hour of chatting with one party requires approximately .6 MB.

Uploads

Documents:
Business presentations are estimated to require 1 MB each.

Photos:(Flicker, Facebook)
A low-to medium-resolution digital photo is estimated to require 1.8 MB. Higher-resolution photos will require more data.

Online Backup:
This value will vary depending on the amount of data you are backing up. It’s a 1-1 ratio so if you back up 5 GB worth of data your usage would be 5 GB.

Downloads

Software:
Vary greatly depending on the downloading. We are using 500 MB per software download as a default value.

Updates (Virus/Windows/Gaming Updates)
This value will vary depending on the user. Use this field to estimate the total size of your average monthly updates.

• Typical windows updates average around 30-40 MB.
• A Service pack update can be as large as 900 MB.
• Gaming patches can also range greatly – Most patches range from 3 - 40 MB. Some are above 4000 MB.