What Uses Data on Cox Internet?
Cox Communications is one of the biggest ISPs in the United States of America providing internet connection service to millions of households across the country. Since you’re using Cox Internet to connect your computer to the Internet, you have access to a wealth of information that is available on the World Wide Web that can consume a lot of bandwidth. But what does your Cox internet data allowance get utilized by? In this article, the author will highlight the main data usage aspects of Cox Internet and will give recommendations on how to keep an eye on your usage.
Surfing the Web and App usage
One of the primary forms of appreciating internet data is through the use of our devices to access websites and other internet-based applications. Accessing webpages, articles, and news – even browsing YouTube, shopping online involves data download such as text, images, sounds, and video. The exact amount used varies according to the level of web complication, but even basic websites engage some kilobytes of data.
Streaming Video and Music
Watching or streaming TV shows, movies, music, and other streamable content is another product that consumes much of Cox's internet data. Nowadays, such channels as Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Spotify, and YouTube offer a world of entertainment with no end to the scrolling, but all the fun is at the expense of data. While streaming SD video, one consumes roughly 700MB per hour, but streaming in high definition may take over 3GB per hour. Streaming music also consumes data, although not as quickly as the rate of call and messaging usage—about 100MB per hour.
This includes scrolling through social media and sending messages.
Navigating through social apps such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and TikTok involves downloading pictures, videos, gifs, and other objects that may embed feeds and/or messages. This is because video streaming takes up more data than any other type of content, and application such as TikTok is heavily dominated by videos. Other applications whose usage consumes data include; iMessage, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Skype among others due to factors such as image transfers, audio message transfer, video calls, and files transferred in conversations. Such as text messaging only requires a small amount of data but the other content may consume a lot of data in the long run.
Storing data and files on the cloud
If you frequently copy or share files between external storage or devices and online storage services such as Google Drive, Dropbox, iCloud, or OneDrive, these background apps open and transfer a significant amount of data. Updates of software and apps, creating backups of photos and videos, or syncing files for use across platforms then consist of a series of small data transfers which when put together add up. Uploading large files and/or datasets, such as photos or videos, or archiving large files requires a large amount of upstream capacity at once.
Gaming and Downloading Files
Xbox and PlayStation gaming consoles depend on data usage that is constant when allowing multiplayer gaming. Some titles may take less than 100MB per hour while other titles with more graphic content use more than 500MB per hour. Playing games with digital distribution services such as Steam, PlayStation Store, Nintendo eShop, or Xbox Games Store can also consume multiple gigabytes of data very fast. Likewise, downloading files, programs, torrents or other software increases the use of downstream data proportional to the size of the file.
They include operating systems and security updates.
Cox Internet data usage: Your Cox Internet data allowance also counts when you are downloading security patches, feature updates, apps from official sources, and more. Laptops and PCs running on Windows, Macs, smartphones, and other devices that connect to the internet expect continuous downloads of updates over the internet to solve problems, performance enhancement, and fix security flaws. These system updates generally do not fetch much intermittent data but are included in the usage figures.
Nonvoice Traffic such as Smart Home and IoT Devices
Also, Cox internet data increasingly goes into a variety of connected smart home devices and more broadly the burgeoning ‘Internet of Things’ devices. Smart home devices like smart speakers, smart TVs, smart video doorbells, smart security cameras, smart thermostats, smart lights, smart appliances, and many more rely on constant data for their functioning, controlling and updating through companion apps, and receiving software/firmware updates. Data usage is typically measured in megabytes per month for each device and while not very striking, it can quickly amass when multiple smart devices are connected in one household.
Techniques on How to Monitor and Control the Use of Data
This is important as miscalculations can lead to you using a lot of data, and thus incurring more costs than expected. Cox offers two free tools to monitor usage: the Cox Mobile Guard app for iOS and Android smartphones to monitor mobile data charges and the Cox home communication portal to monitor home network utilization. These tools make it possible to set usage data limits that send usage notifications.
You can also limit data usage by You can also limit data usage by:
- Wireless streaming sparingly and employing WiFi as opposed to cellular connectivity.
- Applying Data Saver mode to certain apps such as YouTube, Netflix and Spotify
- Decreasing the video stream quality from High Definition to Standard
- Limiting downloads or uploads of large files and simultaneous update mechanisms to WiFi connections
- Disabling the app background refresh and autoplay settings
Last but not least, Cox has a cheaper flexible data option dubbed Flex Data Blocks which enables a customer to add or subtract data units in portions depending on the household’s usage patterns every month. Knowing what uses Cox internet data ultimately helps one grasp the data usage more hence better control over the same.
Ready to upgrade your internet experience? Call us now at +1 844-349-7575 to explore the best Cox Internet plans for your needs!