Bandwidth consumption is an increasing concern for all organizations as bandwidth-intensive sites and video streaming become more popular. The table below offers several examples of the amount of bandwidth that different online activities consume.
| Activity or File | Size (in kb) |
| One hour of IM chatting with AOL | 10 |
| Send a one-page text email with Gmail | 150 |
| View five different articles in Wikipedia | 1,200 |
| Upload a 10MP JPEG photo in Flickr | 2,400 |
| Downloading a 3 minute song from iTunes | 5,600 |
| Watch a 5 minute YouTube video | 12,500 |
| Watch episode of “The Simpsons” | 25,000 |
| Listen to one hour of music on Pandora | 56,300 |
| Compressed version of “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” | 800,000 |
As the table shows, many online activities that are probably not work related utilize a lot of bandwidth. The last thing any organization needs is network latency or slowdowns due to non-work related online activity.
To mitigate this problem, CyBlock and Cyfin provide IT with the information needed to determine 1) if the bandwidth consumption is work related and 2) if any measures need to be taken to reduce the amount of consumption. Both products provide quantified data (via Web-use reports) that can help IT personnel keep track of network (bandwidth) utilization by users as well as by type of usage (appropriate or not so appropriate).
The Dashboard is the easiest way to get a quick view of bandwidth usage. You can quickly find the top bandwidth consumers by users, groups, categories or sites. You can also check when spikes in bandwidth activity occur.
The reports below can also be used to monitor bandwidth usage by users and identify potentially troublesome sites.
- Site Analysis Bandwidth Report – Focusing on kilobytes by classification, category, and users, this report gives a good overview of whether the majority of bandwidth consumption was acceptable and which categories and users used the most bandwidth.
- Top Bandwidth Sites Report – This report shows the top bandwidth consuming sites and their categories for the specified time period.
- Network Information Report – Find out your busiest time of day for Internet use with this report. It shows visits and kilobytes read by hour.
- Top Users Report – This report displays the top hits, visits, and kilobytes by user.
These reports can help you anticipate overload possibilities and the need (or lack of need) to purchase additional capacity. If abuse can be detected and brought under control, the cost of additional capacity may be avoided.
By monitoring and using the reports listed above, you can:
- Obtain an accurate, content-categorized picture of network usage patterns
- Identify bandwidth abusers for management attention
- Prevent bandwidth wastage through intelligent filtering
- Improve IT system performance and reduce bandwidth costs.