Ever found yourself wondering where all of your broadband download quota went after you have been throttled accompanied by finger pointing and frustration? Perhaps you want to make full use of your peak and off-peak quota? Maybe you find it hard to ration your usage during the month?
If you use Firefox, there is a fantastic little add-on called “Net Usage Item”. It works with a raft of Australian ISPs and a selection of ISPs in other countries including:
- Belgium,
- Canada,
- India,
- New Zealand,
- Portugal,
- Ukraine.
Net Usage Item (Firefox)
Up to four Net Usage Item widgets can be dropped into the Firefox toolbar. As you can see, I keep track of three separate broadband accounts as I can afford the space in my browser window. Setting it up is a snap, just right click on the widget, choose “Preferences” and you’ll be presented with the below window:
Net Usage Item (Preferences)
Simply choose your ISP, how often you want your usage to update and your username and password. Usually, Net Usage Item is smart enough to work out peak and off-peak quotas based upon the feed from your ISP but you can tweak additional settings if it falls short.
Reading the widget is also fairly straightforward. By default, your peak quota is displayed in megabytes or as a percentage (depending on your plan) while the green bar represents your peak usage while the blue bar your off-peak usage. The tiny black arrow hanging from the top of each lozenge shows how much of the current billing period that has elapsed. Ideally, you should keep you peak and off-peak usage as close to that arrow as possible to avoid being throttled and get the full value from your plan.
You can tweak the presentation to suit by showing either peak or off-peak usage, both simultaneously or have it automatically change. There are also a few different themes for it if you are that way inclined.
There are only a few downsides to an otherwise brilliant add-on. Firstly, the infrequent occasions when usage refuses to update are probably more as a result of an ISP changing its usage feed than anything else but require you to go fetch an update to the add-on. Secondly, if you have multiple services hanging off a single username (like OptusNet when you have a fixed broadband service and a mobile broadband service) you can only ever view the first account. Lastly, it’s a real shame that this isn’t available for Google Chrome.
So now there is no excuse not to manage your usage closely!
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