Please Help :(

I have been playing SL for about a week, when I discovered that our DSL provider shaped our connection down to 78kbps because the logs show I was using 500 mb a day playing SL. I played for about 4 hours a day. Now my husband says that I cant play anymore because it uses too much bandwith and we have a 7 gig limit per month. Is there anything I can do to help so I can still play?

Right in the middle of my addiction, and I was just thinking of upgrading my account..

Ouch, wow. Where do you live that your ISP does that?

Probably, Australia, New Zealand or Greece, or a lot of the smaller 1st/2nd world countries.

I have had the same problem in the past, with other applications, and ended up resolving it, with a move to 120GB/month transfer.

FYI. SL does do 500mb/transfer a day quite easily. I usually do 900-1400MB/day.

-Adam

I am in Perth Australia. Guess I wont be able to play

Oryiah,

Sorry to hear about your problems. The only possible ways out of your problem are (a) to strictly ration your time inworld (b) to persuade your husband to upgrade your account to allow for more bandwidth or (c) try to find a provider who does not charge for bandwidth.

I do hope you don't have to give up something you enjoy so much.

Yep, a smaller 1st world country it is. I just CAN'T WAIT until PacBell starts doing that

Anyway, try setting your draw distance down. It'll help A LOT. Trust me.

Most countries used metered bandwidth. It is a sensible, scalable, and fair business model. Though inconvenient for us bandwidth hungry power users, it guarantees that the 90% Joe Users will always be able to check their email and browse a few web pages when they so desire.
Last Christmas I paid like $150 for excess bandwidth fees... not to mention $25 for the supposedly free focus group conference call
The bandwidth bills were part of why I left SL for several months, and the more casual style of play I engage in nowadays is still quite taxing on my monthly bandwidth allocation.
I CAN get unmetered bandwidth from another ISP, though the monthly fee would be much higher and the lag would be horrible from all the bandwidth hogs downloading their precious little porn.

Wow, I'm glad I live in Canada. I pay $60Cdn/$45 USD/35 EUR/$60 AU for 1.5/768 ADSL, unlimited transfer, and a phone line with unlimited local calling. ...which doesn't help any of you guys, I'm just saying.

Unfortunately, there isn't any way to increase object/texture cache size beyond 1 GB, so you're unlikely to be able to save bandwidth that way.

Your best bet would be to try and find other ISP options. Either that, or try and steal bandwidth from your neighbours' WiFi networks.

Amazingly no one had mentioned the obvious.. Try lowering the bandwith cap in the preferences.. That should help some, at the expense of slower loading.. (which is the point, as you fly by stuff you dont really need to see, it wont download)

Will that make a difference in bandwth usage?