As users move more and more to cloud services, saving traffic is becoming an important element to increase Internet bandwidth. In addition, some tariff plans even today require payment for the amount of downloaded data. This is especially true for mobile providers.
What program can really be implemented to save traffic? Below are some effective ways.
Blocking websites with streaming content
The first thing you should do is block access to streaming media sites (such as Netflix, YouTube, and MetaCafe). Of course, watching a small video on YouTube will not be significant and will not make the Internet connection slow, but large volumes of such content require very high bandwidth. By disabling access to all resources of this kind, you will notice that saving traffic is very possible.
Stop the backup application in the cloud
If you constantly back up data in the cloud, check to see if your backup application has a throttling mechanism. Such a service will require a lot of traffic and occupy most of the bandwidth. This will not be expressed significantly if you back up small files (such as Microsoft Office documents) all day long. But when you start uploading bulk data to the cloud, the initial backup should only be created on your computer. If constant throttling is not stopped, this can have a significant impact on your traffic consumption.
VoIP restriction
VoIP is another heavy traffic bandwidth. If you plan to use this technology, you should limit the duration of calls as much as possible. If you talk for a long time and use any extension in working with the service, saving traffic will not be effective.
Using cache proxies
A proxy cache can help limit the amount of traffic generated by a web browser. The main idea is that when a user visits a particular site, the contents of the page are cached on the proxy server. The next time the user visits the same page, its contents should no longer be loaded again (since it already exists in the cache). Using a cache proxy not only saves traffic, but can also give users the illusion that an Internet connection is much faster than it actually is. This is a good quality, no matter what tariff plan you use.
Centralizing application updates
Today, almost every application is configured to download periodic updates over the Internet. You can save a lot of traffic by centralizing the upgrade process. For example, instead of allowing each device in your home to connect to the Microsoft update service, you need to configure the WSUS server to download all updates, and then make them available to individual gadgets. Thus, the same updates will not be downloaded again and again.
Using Hosted Filtering
If you manage your own mail server, then an excellent mode of saving traffic will be ensured when using Hosted Filtering. Thanks to this service, data will be downloaded on a cloud server, and not on your mail server. This server receives all mail that is designed for you, filters out spam or messages containing malicious software. The remaining messages are sent as intended. You can save a lot of traffic (and mail server resources) due to the fact that numerous spam will not be downloaded to you.
Active Malware Scan
Malicious programs can use a lot of traffic without your knowledge, using your computer as a bot. Be diligent in your efforts to keep all your devices connected to the Network uninfected.
Using QoS to reserve traffic
QoS stands for Quality of Service. This mechanism (bandwidth reservation), which was first put into operation in Windows 2000, continues to be relevant today. If you have applications that require a certain amount of traffic (for example, video conferencing applications), you can configure QoS to reserve the required data throughput for this application. This traffic saving is effective only when the application is actively used. In other cases, the amount of data reserved for the application becomes available for other purposes.
Make sure you don’t overpay for traffic
As noted above, many factors affect the bandwidth of the Internet, so you can not expect that you can connect to each website at the maximum speed of your connection. However, connecting to the network should provide performance that is close enough to the one you pay for.
It is very unlikely that the provider intentionally provides someone with a slower connection than provided by the contract and payment, but there are often cases in which the connection is divided into several devices. In the case of such a general connection, the user activity of one of the devices can directly affect the speed of data loading. If your Internet connection is not as fast as it should be, try to figure out all the connections on your network.
In addition, you must regularly monitor the traffic that you spend while working on the Web. If you notice a noticeable overspending, you should think about which services you use too actively. If the traffic savings are very noticeable and you do not spend most of the amount of data provided by the provider, you can think about switching to an easier tariff plan.
Opera Browser and Turbo Mode
The well-known Turbo mode, which is available in any version of the Opera browser, as well as in Yandex.Browser, can be used not only to speed up downloaded data, but also to reduce traffic volumes. The essence of his work is that when loading pages the servers of the browser itself are used, and due to this, the amount of data downloaded during the connection is reduced. Therefore, if it is important for you to save the amount of data transfer, work only in the “Turbo” mode.
In this case, there will be no problems with how to turn off traffic savings. Just go to the appropriate settings and disable the above option.
Saving on mobile devices
The unlimited tariff of a mobile operator is much less common, and many use the 3G function. How can traffic savings be achieved on a smartphone?
If you have a device based on the Android OS, you can set the maximum traffic that can be consumed in a certain period of time. There is even a warning setting that can be placed on the desktop as a widget. You don’t even need a special application to save traffic.
To make such settings, you need to go to the “Settings” menu, select “Wireless Networks” and in the further paragraphs find the “Traffic Control” tab. Depending on the version of the Android OS, the names of the menu items may differ. Having entered the specified setting, you need to set the maximum amount of data that you allow for use. If you exceed the specified limit, the Internet will simply turn off.
Save Traffic: Beta Special Mobile Applications
Currently, there are also more and more special programs and browser extensions designed to save traffic. One of the most famous is Opera Max beta, which is a specialized software that compresses any transmitted data. Thus, the beta program saves traffic not only through the browser, but also through information from instant messengers and other applications running on the Web.