Google Chrome and bandwidth

An IDNet customer has been having problems with excess bandwidth usage that he couldn't account for. No wireless so it wasn't a leecher.

He's sussed it- as this isn't an uncommon problem here I thought it worth repeating what he found:

http://www.idnetters.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,28...

Link posted with permission.

Interesting.

Re. Google Chrome 'pre-rendering/fetching'.

As the link points out you can disable:
"Predict network actions to improve page load performance" in Settings > Under the bonnet.

But rather than change your shortcuts to start Chrome you can type: chrome://flags/ into the address bar and disable the option:
Prerender from omnibox Mac, Windows, Linux, Chrome OS
Enables prerendering of suggestions from the Omnibox and predicts appropriate network actions (prerendering, Instant, DNS preconnect) by calculating a confidence value for each Omnibox result.


EDIT:
Forgot to say. You can turn off prefetching in Firefox by entering about:config in the address bar. Then type 'fetch' in the search which should show you your network.prefetch-next settings. Double-click to set it to 'false'.

I don't like all this pre-fetching stuff. I like to (try) to be in control of what my PC downloads!

Edited by b4dger (Tue 17-Apr-12 15:02:07)

In reply to a post by b4dger:

I don't like all this pre-fetching stuff. I like to (try) to be in control of what my PC downloads!

Same here.

I also wonder if all those pre-fetched urls will get logged if the Govt implement some of their sillier ideas...