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Board » Technical Support » data usage for sol

Posted by
captjack1942


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2008-01-18 03:24:03
2011-06-06 03:38:48 - data usage for sol
I'm considering a pre-paid plan with a mobile usb dongle so that I can have decent internet connection on the boat. Question is: How much data does sol take to load? How much to pick up boat updates, and weather changes?
There was some talk of this in the past someplace in the forum and in chat. I seem to remember that it could take as much as 10 Mbps to load, but don't remember amount to run for say 1 hour,
Is there a way to measure usage? Has anyone done so?
Posted by
Jawz


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2009-07-21 09:51:19
2011-06-06 06:25:56 - Re: data usage for sol
Hi Jack!

I took a look yesterday on the Vancouver race.

14 hours continuous used up 75 Mbytes.

This included opening up a 2nd sol tab(once) to check on another boat. Plus opening up about 20 tabs to look at links referred to on chat and the Imsyc race boats.

Hourly download is in the region of 4 - 5 Mbytes per hour.

Regards
George
Posted by
AGage


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2008-12-27 10:31:57
2011-06-06 08:04:49 - Re: data usage for sol
captjack1942 said @ 2011-06-06 03:38:48:
I'm considering a pre-paid plan with a mobile usb dongle so that I can have decent internet connection on the boat.

Question is: How much data does sol take to load?
client is about 800Kb

How much to pick up boat updates,
About 500bytes, which equates to 2Kb per minute.

and weather changes?
The wx, race and map data all depend on the size of the map/fleet - I just used the Vancouver race to have a look at exact numbers - the fleet file is 18.1Kb. Wx was about 1.6Kb. The tiles for initial map load were just over 300Kb.

There was some talk of this in the past someplace in the forum and in chat. I seem to remember that it could take as much as 10 Mbps to load, but don't remember amount to run for say 1 hour,
Is there a way to measure usage? Has anyone done so?
(easy way) You could use Google Chrome's 'Developer Tools' and peek at the network - it shows a running total.
To say it can take 10Mbps you are confusing speed with size. It may 'burst' at the full speed of your own internet bandwidth, be that 3.6 or 7.2 Mbps on a 3G wireless, or 150Mbps on adsl2, but will NEVER sustain that for more than a few seconds.

Jawz numbers are pretty typical I think. If you allowed 10Mb per hour (a high value) and factor how many hours per week you spend on SOL you will never fall short.

Maybe they are different in the US, but about the only mobile data plans here that would not provide enough quota are the small 'Email Only' ones around 2-500Mb per month. 2Gb should cover even the heaviest of SOL users, but consider price per Gb to - and that you will probably want to browse other sites (possibly with even more data).

Also bear in mind, having the Navigation page on brainaid's toolbox open will eat a little bit of data as it refreshes periodically, as will any tool that reads SOL data, like his NMEA proxy.

Most browsers do a good job of caching content. I can reload a race, and FF and Chrome both report using wx from the cache, obviously race files cannot be, nor anything generated as a response to client requests. So the 'penalty' for closing and reopening a race is quite small.

I have a 12Gb 3G mobile plan myself, and use alot (comparatively) of SOL data - staying logged into races for long periods and using brainaids NMEA - I also download movies/tv shows, play other online games and alot of other data besides, and never go over - mind you I could use more if it were available ;-)

I help develop the client interface for the best online ocean racing sim there is... __/)/)_/)__
Posted by
AGage


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2008-12-27 10:31:57
2011-06-06 09:19:52 - Re: data usage for sol
I just used the Firebug plugin with Firefox, opened Vancouver and let it sit for 1 hour - it resulted in about 3.3Mb of data (about 750Kb of which was in cache) - no commands or chat outgoing - but that is only small data so this is around an 'average' for a SOL race (medium size map/wind/fleet?)
I help develop the client interface for the best online ocean racing sim there is... __/)/)_/)__
Posted by
captjack1942


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2008-01-18 03:24:03
2011-06-06 18:17:56 - Re: data usage for sol
Thanks Aaron and George. That's some useful info. Now I think I can make a good choice without over paying.

:-)

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