Bandwidth conservation can be important for those living nomadically, especially when boondocking, since access to the internet may be limited or slow. Similar to dealing with water or electrical power, it is typically easier to reduce your consumption rather than trying to add more supply. Here are the most common factors:
- Cost - on metered or capped plans going over can be expensive
- Availability - sometimes the connection is sketchy or has too many users for the size of the "pipe".
Video
Video takes more bandwidth than almost anything else. it's the data equivalent of trying to run an electric space heater from a battery. Everything else is an afterthought in terms of data usage compared to video. Video will easily take more data usage in just a few minutes than the entire rest of your internet usage might in an day. This includes:
- Zoom or other videoconferencing calls
- Streaming/watching video on YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, Disney+, Apple, TikTok, etc.
- uploading video
If you can reduce or eliminate any kind of video data usage, you've made the problem of data vastly smaller already. If you are going to stream, see if you can turn the quality down as low as tolerable. Use your phone instead of laptop or tablet, as they will typically default to a lower resolution stream. Some services, like Netflix, allow you to download videos while on an unlimited connection for later consumption while offline.
Consider using software like Tartube or youtube-dl to download videos while on an unlimited connection for later consumption.
When on a shared connection (such as campground wifi) limit your use of streaming video if possible: Some networking gear is socket-limited; there is a certain number of "slots" available for users. When web browsing, reading email, etc., a user will take one of the slots for active data then release it. Streaming holds the socket open, which can block other users from using the resource. If you can, download the media during off-hours; this is the kindest to the provider and to other users.
Anything that's not video takes much less bandwidth. Even audio streaming is barely a drop in the bucket; a 2-hour-long podcast is 20-30mb while a 2-hour-long movie is 500-2,000mb. For those operating on limited quantities or quality of data, it's best to find some music, podcasts, or audiobooks to fill your entertainment time rather than trying to figure out how to binge Netflix in your van. Professional-quality photo uploading can also take a lot of bandwidth, but it's still nowhere in the same range as video.
Use mobile devices (or fake it)
Use cell phones or mobile devices when possible, instead of laptops. Mobile web browsers and apps are generally designed to be more efficient about data usage, and most web sites will have mobile-optimized versions that are more lightweight.
- You can sometimes fake this on some desktop web browsers by using extensions to trick them into fetching the mobile versions of web pages, or by doing it manually with specific web addresses. For most sites, putting an
m.
just before the domain name will help. For example with Facebook, use https://m.facebook.com/. Facebook also has an even more limited site available at https://mbasic.facebook.com/ - You may want to hack that behavior by sending a false user agent string.
Stop unnecessary data transfers
Turn off data usage when not needed:
- Modern devices are very "chatty", in that they're consistently taking up bandwidth to perpetually be checking for new e-mails, posts, messages, cat pictures, and updates.
- When going to bed or when you know you're not using the device for a while, turn off just the data connection. This will stop this continuous trickle of background data usage, and can make a big difference for those on pay-per-gig or capped monthly plans. You may not get notified immediately when someone posts a new cat picture, however SMS and phone calls should still come through (as those operate on a push notification from the cellular network, rather than a pull from the phone). Be sure to test this with your specific devices.
- Many cell phones will have options for "Low Data Mode", which will attempt to limit or stop this background behavior as well.
- Ad-blockers and tracker blockers can stop a significant amount of traffic that you don't really want to see anyway. The uBlock Origin browser plugin for Firefox and Chrome/Chromium is simple to use and surprisingly effective. It is a good first step to reducing web bandwidth use.
- Most browsers will allow you to block content like videos or images by default.
Offline navigation
Of particular interest for nomads: There are offline navigation apps like CoPilot and OsmAnd (free) that allow you to download maps on wifi and use them without data while traveling. Note that realtime traffic data doesn't work since the apps are offline. Google maps will let you download certain map tiles for offline use. This would work best if you are in the same areas but would be less useful while traveling.
Compression proxies
A compression proxy runs between you and the internet and optimizes/compresses web content to save bandwidth. It may downgrade image quality for substantial savings. It is an internet version of mail forwarding services that throw out the junk and extra packing before sending your mail (web page) to you. This is only marginally useful now that most internet traffic is encrypted (https); the proxy can't compress what is transferred because it can't see what it is.
If you are technically minded and have a server somewhere you can run your own compression proxy using freeware like ziproxy. The Bandwidth Hero project compresses images; significant assembly required.
A German ISP runs SkyZip, a compression proxy.
Local email clients
Before the advent of "webmail" (email read from a webpage) people used email "clients" (programs) to connect to email servers and pull down their email. They would write responses or compose new mail offline. Next time they had a connection the mail would be sent/received. This original form of email access will serve you well in periods of intermittent access and will save bandwidth even when you have a good feed. Common email clients include Outlook for Windows and Thunderbird.
Find the POP (sometimes called POP3) settings for your webmail provider. Here are the settings for gmail and the settings for yahoo. Others will be similar. Google something like “[your provider] pop3 settings”. There is another method called IMAP but it consumes more bandwidth and is not a good fit for most people. If you needed IMAP you would know it.
There are several bandwidth-saving features built into most clients:
- download "headers" only - This means that when you pick up mail it only retrieves the To/From/Subject/etc lines at first, giving you an opportunity to delete any spam or useless mail without ever having to download it. If you do want to read the email it will be retrieved automatically when you click to read it.
- download last X days - if you are downloading from an established mailbox and choose something like "download all mail" you could get all email since the account was created; you probably don't want this. You can pick "last 7 days" or "last 30 days" depending on your needs.
- deselect "download images automatically" - you can click on images to download them but this will keep you from wasting bandwidth on junk images.
- deselect "download attachments automatically" - as with images, you can click on the ones you really want without pulling down everything. Attachments are huge compared to the text of the actual email.
- if your feed is really minimal you can save a few KB by writing and replying to email in plain text rather than HTML.
- You can also save a few KB by trimming quoted material from prior emails.
Many of these settings will be available in webmail also.
Podcasts
Podcasts consume much less bandwidth than video but savings still can be had. If given a choice, OGG/Vorbis or AAC will be smaller than identical-sounding MP3. Also look to see if your podcast creator offers a low bandwidth feed. Example: Security Now podcast. Choose the podcast episodes you want to hear instead of automatically downloading all the episodes.
Android
On recent versions of Android, you can pull up the Settings > Apps menu and disable or uninstall unwanted apps. This will stop the creeping background data use and battery consumption.
If you only want to control sneaky data use, you can go to Settings > Mobile Data (or Data Usage) and select any apps you see listed as being hogs. Tap on the hog and Restrict app background data. It will still be able to use mobile data when you are using the app but not when you are not interacting with it. Note: Apps that you intend to run in the background (email, texting, navigation/satnav, google services, streaming, whatever) should keep access to background data.[1]
Conserving Wi-Fi data
Public WiFi (such as at restaurants or shops) is a shared resource, one that is often free as a service to customers. It does not, then, represent an opportunity to waste bandwidth. The tips for Mobile Data also apply on Wi-Fi, but there are couple of chokepoints in a shared resources like wifi:
- upload congestion - for technical reasons downloading from the internet also requires some upstream traffic. This usually isn't a problem unless someone is hammering the upload with video, audio, or other large uploads. Large uploading loads like that can max out the upstream which, for those technical reasons, can cause major problems for normal users even if there is plenty of downstream bandwidth available. So be polite and do your large uploads during periods of low wifi use.
- interference - Wi-Fi is radio frequency in the microwave range. If you are running a repeater/extender and your hardware supports it, use a different channel than the main wifi. This will reduce interference and make everyone's experience better. Also adjust your repeater to run on the minimum output wattage required to meet your needs. No reason to pollute the nearby area with signals they can't use.
This page was initially based on a blog post.