Few Internet users actually know how much data they consume in a month's time, raising logical fears about possible bandwidth consumption caps. But NETGEAR plans to help by including a consumption meter on at least one new model router, with plans to add the feature to other models as well, eventually making it a standard feature on all its routers.

 

The WNDR3700 router will ship with a "Traffic Meter" that measures downloads and uploads on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis, and allows for customized alerts.

 

That sort of feature will arm at least some users with the information they need to ascertain whether bandwidth caps are anything to worry about, or not.

 

In general terms, lighter users might use a gigabyte up to five gigabytes a month. Multiple-user sites obviously will have to multiply by the number of users to estimate total consumption over a typical month, but a very-high percentage of users fall into this category.

 

A medium consumption site might generally be a household with several members, and a reasonable expectation might be consumption in the eight gigabyte to 10GBe range each month.

 

Heavy users might consume 20GB to 40GB. A very small number of users actually consume more than this amount of bandwidth in a month's time, by many estimates.

 

As a rule of thumb, residential usage is higher than business usage, per person, some studies have shown.