I’m a web worker. My work is online, and it all slows to a snail’s pace if I’m streaming or downloading a video.
I have “High-Speed Xtreme-I” which promises “up to” a-lot, but the metered download rate is much, much lower than advertised, about 1.5-2Mb/s up and 0.75Mb/s. Fire up a video download and I’m in slowmo.
I want my favorite online video content delivered to me. Some of it is available on iTunes. Others like WordPress.tv is available on Miro.
Currently, I download a batch at the end of the day, but for my family the web is no fun if I’m downloading video podcasts in iTunes.
Is there a way to self-throttle or meter specific streams, downloads or applications on Mac OS X?
Unfortunately, there is a lot of content that isn’t even available for downloading. Mostly, I imagine because the content is supported by web page ads. I’d pay for that content, why is there no Audible.com for video podcasts? Or is there?
Even if available on iTunes or Miro, there is not even a link back to the online discussion, let alone comments, inline comments and tags (Viddler), and other resources. I would like it all to be pulled into my video player, except for YouTube comments 
Am I alone? Any help fellow web workers? Any help from NewTeeVee pros?
Not exactly the advice you may be seeking, but I’ve been with AT&T’s U-Verse 16 Mb/s plan since January, and I’m consistently seeing between 13 and 15 Mb/s – even on a wireless connection. Costs $65 a month though. I stream shows all the time while running heavy processes without a hiccup.
Phil, bandwidth as advertised?! ~14 Mb/s seems dreamy.
Don’t tell your other North American friends as they might get jealous.
Alas, the cable broadband monopoly here is Shaw.ca and my plan still costs me $51.95 .
This (Free and Open Source!) application looks like the ticket: WaterRoof.
You might give them a call and have them do a line test. It could be that something in your cable wiring is causing slowdown. You’re getting less than 15% of the advertised “up to” speed, which is crap.
My service (Verizon FiOS) is rated “up to” 25/5. Right now with other stuff running in the background and a half-dozen Internet enabled devices through the house connected to the router, I’m getting 19/4. I’ve tested it with nothing else going and gotten it to measure the full rated speed. There’s no excuse for only getting 2mbps out of a 15mbps connection.
Mark, thank you! You’ve given me some confidence to pursue this. Knowing the language is a big part it to.
http://www.speedtest.net/global.php let me drill down a little bit to see average transfer speeds with different providers, but I would love more detailed info.
WaterRoof, “IPFW firewall frontend for Mac OS X” looks promising too, if I have to go down that path.
I’m lucky my city government decided to offer Fiber to The Home for everyone in the city. I am getting 10.5Mb/s down and 9.5Mb/s up. I have the low end plan. They also offer 30Mb/s and 50Mb/s plan. Anyone on the same citywide network can communicate with each other at 100Mb/s. We voted for Fiber 4 years ago and were in a legal battle with the phone companies for that many years. It is interesting that all those companies (AT&T, Cox, etc.) are now upping their speeds in our area to compete. A smaller city like Lafayette, Louisiana would never have had this type of speed otherwise.
Wow Zachary! I have not heard of similar stories. What a smart, forward thinking community you have.
So I phoned last night, and now am seeing 12 way up to 31 Mbps! I’ll keep my eye on it.
I hate network issues, particularly wireless — thankfully, this is not. If there was a $50 device to test and diagnose network issues, I would be all over it.
I make a bookmark and append “Watch” to the title to see it clearly among my list. I usually get around to watching some of them on Sundays.
There is a program called TubiTunes for downloading YouTube videos to your iTunes: http://www.manytricks.com/tubitunes/
A neat app would be one that queued your online videos for you, then stayed on top so you could work while you watched. After one finished, it would head to the next one. And no downloading — or if so, only temp files — because I never save these kinds of videos.
An easier way to do it would be to use QOS.
I suggest a Linksys WRT54G (or GL) and Tomato firmware.
http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato
I used to have problems watching live streams on Shaw as well but since the recent upgrade get much better speed. I have also found that LittleSnitch can slow down a system if you are running filesharing in the background so if you are using it try switching it off for bandwidth intensive tasks.
I have to agree with Pavel here; I use QOS with a Linksys WRT54G and I have Shaw and my times are within reason plus I do a LOT of heavy downloading. It’s all about the equipment.
Cheers!