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#1 2012-10-09 01:52:21

pablox
Member
From: /home/chile/santiago/
Registered: 2008-05-14
Posts: 183
Website

USB 3g modem good practices?

I just got my huawei e353 3g modem and thanks to the wiki it's working (almost) out of box. At least here (Chile) most "plans" (sorry, I don't know how to say that in english) has some kind of navigation cap, which means if you transfer more than "x" gb your connection stops working.

Seeing that, I'm a bit worried because I'm used to navigate a lot and I don't want to reach this cap in a couple of days. As it weren't enough, I also don't have a good idea how much bandwidth a regular web page use (or at least the ones that I visit frequently). Of course I already know some gross stuff like I can't play online games, download stuff, stream media, ecc.

Until now, I've found that applications like bandwidthd, darkstat, ifstat or wireshark should serve this purpose, but some of them are REALLY complex (and to be honest, I don't want to study a lot only to get some insights).

My roadmap would be something like:

  • Know how much I'm transferring each session to get a rough estimate.

  • See what is using most of my "transfer total".

Sorry if this has been answered before, I honestly couldn't find anything useful, but it's likely because I don't know how to search for it =/.


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#2 2012-10-09 01:56:18

headkase
Member
Registered: 2011-12-06
Posts: 1,975

Re: USB 3g modem good practices?

If you use a web-browser that supports plugins you can install Ad-Block and FlashBlock or equivalents.  Together those would fairly reduce the amount of bandwidth you use when browsing.

Edit: and not all browsers are the same.  For example: in Firefox ad-block prevents the ads from coming over the wire.  In chrome the ads still come over the wire but they just aren't shown to you.

Last edited by headkase (2012-10-09 01:58:10)

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#3 2012-10-09 11:46:39

Strike0
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2011-09-05
Posts: 1,429

Re: USB 3g modem good practices?

Have a look at the output of

netstat -i

which leaves you with some computing of packets into GBytes. Keep in mind that your ISP might not treat all raw traffic reported as bandwith.

Then a fine little tool you want to try out is

pacman -S iftop

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#4 2012-10-09 12:30:56

sva_h4cky0
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From: Surabaya, Indonesia
Registered: 2009-03-25
Posts: 110
Website

Re: USB 3g modem good practices?

since im kde addict (LOL), i using knemo. its available on repos

http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=12956


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#5 2012-10-09 12:37:35

plustwo
Member
From: South Africa, ZA
Registered: 2012-09-13
Posts: 32

Re: USB 3g modem good practices?

I somehow find "vnstat" very helpful for me, especially when on a 3G dialup...

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#6 2012-10-09 21:43:32

pablox
Member
From: /home/chile/santiago/
Registered: 2008-05-14
Posts: 183
Website

Re: USB 3g modem good practices?

headkase wrote:

If you use a web-browser that supports plugins you can install Ad-Block and FlashBlock or equivalents.  Together those would fairly reduce the amount of bandwidth you use when browsing.

Edit: and not all browsers are the same.  For example: in Firefox ad-block prevents the ads from coming over the wire.  In chrome the ads still come over the wire but they just aren't shown to you.

Thanks, I forgot that even if I don't ran them they are still using a lot of bandwidth. Following your idea I find ImageBlock, which does basically the same, but -oh! surprise!- for images :), worth looking :P.

Strike0 wrote:

Have a look at the output of

netstat -i

which leaves you with some computing of packets into GBytes. Keep in mind that your ISP might not treat all raw traffic reported as bandwith.

Then a fine little tool you want to try out is

pacman -S iftop

Thanks, I'll read about them.

sva_h4cky0 wrote:

since im kde addict (LOL), i using knemo. its available on repos

http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=12956

Well, it could be a good idea excepting that I had to download and install the whole kde environment D:

plustwo wrote:

I somehow find "vnstat" very helpful for me, especially when on a 3G dialup...

Really? Why? The wiki doesn't say too much about its use. Why do you find it useful on 3G?

Last edited by pablox (2012-10-09 21:44:04)


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#7 2012-10-19 01:00:55

dreadz
Member
Registered: 2011-11-23
Posts: 27

Re: USB 3g modem good practices?

Hi, have you tried using sakis ?
It's a small scripit with ncurses that autoconfigures ur 3g modem and has option to show you connection information e.g. ur down/up session.

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#8 2012-10-19 15:21:44

pablox
Member
From: /home/chile/santiago/
Registered: 2008-05-14
Posts: 183
Website

Re: USB 3g modem good practices?

dreadz wrote:

Hi, have you tried using sakis ?
It's a small scripit with ncurses that autoconfigures ur 3g modem and has option to show you connection information e.g. ur down/up session.

No I haven't. Thanks for the suggestion... I'm gonna take a look :).

Until now I've been using iftop that gives me an idea for each session, but not in total. The same applies to ntop, I'd like to save those values on something more "persistent"


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