Author Topic: Need to limit bandwidth (Read 3402 times)

jimr · « **on:** February 18, 2010, 03:41:43 am »

I got a call from Comcast security saying I went way over their 250 gb monthly limit last month. I dl'd a bandwidth meter and sure enough, just today alone was almost 9 Gb, even though I lowered uploads from 6 to 2, and lowered the bandwidth throttle. I guess it is winmx (rather than malware) since the meter stopped jumping when I finally closed winmx. (I was surprised to see uploads continuing even after I clicked 'disconnect' and status is 'offline', but that's another matter, I think).

Maybe it's too technical for me, but I'm thinking I want winmx to use no more than 200 gb/month, so I can do other stuff with browsing, emails etc; I run winmx about 6.5 days/week or 690 hours/month; so I want it to use .27 gb/hour. Am I on the right track? Do I bring it down to .0746 Mb/second?

How do I set the right limits? Pleae use simple terms.

Thanks,
Jim

jimr · « **Reply #1 on:** February 18, 2010, 03:46:09 am »

200   gigabytes/month
31   days/month
6.45   gigabytes/day
0.27   gigabytes/hour
268.8172043   megabytes/hour
4.480286738   megabytes/minute
0.074671446   megabytes/sec
74.67144564   kilobytes/sec
74671.44564   bytes/sec

Bluey_412 · « **Reply #2 on:** February 18, 2010, 05:05:42 am »

I used to think in terms of a 25 Gb HDD, and people wanting to download 100gb a month, and I wondered what on earth they were gonna do with all that content, and where they were gonna put it...

Yeah, I know that some have super-size storage facilities, but...Ya typical movie, .avi format, is around 750 mb, or mebbe a tad less, and its 2 hours of your time to watch it...

Thats 2 hours less at the keyboard...

Then theres work, sleeping, sex, etc etc...

So what DOES one do with all that content?

Or just gather n hoard?

jimr · « **Reply #3 on:** February 18, 2010, 11:18:32 am »

90% of that bandwidth, maybe more, is what people are uploading FROM me. And boy, I've seen people with huge collections of movies, tv shows etc. I don't even save most movies very long.

Joshua203 · « **Reply #4 on:** February 18, 2010, 11:48:49 am »

are you sure they re not talking about your download limit in stead of upload?

wonderer · « **Reply #5 on:** February 18, 2010, 04:48:00 pm »

If you are primary connected to the WPN you act as a kind of server for filesearch and channel listings. This can generate quite a lot of traffic next to your down/uploads. To reduce this to a minimum you go to the tab "WinMx Peer Network" in WinMx settings and select 7KB/s out 10.5KB/s in. If this does not reduces your traffic enough, you better connect as secundary client which option you can find in the WinMx networks tab.

Just as remark, most provider add up and download traffic to get your total traffic.
It is not strange to see traffic generated after you disconnect WinMx as primary, this is due to the search request WinMx has been handling before you disconnected. These request will be finished first. The thus generated traffic will die out but it may last for a couple of hours.

Hope this helps

jimr · « **Reply #6 on:** February 19, 2010, 03:16:51 am »

Joshua, he was very clear - they count both up and downloading.

jimr · « **Reply #7 on:** February 19, 2010, 03:20:54 am »

Wonderer, I already have 7kb out 10.5kb in, and am connected as a secondary (as of a couple of days ago). Is that the lowest I can go?

Bluey_412 · « **Reply #8 on:** February 19, 2010, 05:14:10 am »

hmmm, a slight error in your calcs, 80,000 bytes/sec would give you 199Gb/month, for a 31 day month

Still curious as to what you would do with that volume of data... about 295 movies worth...?

thats 295 movies, every single month...

if it's mostly upload, then you are bein very generous, sure you're not bein Leeched upon?

wonderer · « **Reply #9 on:** February 19, 2010, 06:45:24 am »

On secondary connection the WinMx Peer Network setting has no effect at all, so don't worry there.

What is taking extra bandwidth is the "overhead" taken by up and downloads. Every open up- and download slot takes about 1Kb/s to maintain the down-/upload and on weaker connections you might suffer retry's in transfer of pacckets, so it is hard to tell what your used tranferred data is compared to effective down and upload.

Stevi · « **Reply #10 on:** February 19, 2010, 10:43:46 am »

Ok, I am the 4th person to post in this topic, and I am the only one with the straight answer?

Go into your WinMX Settings and click on Bandwidth Throttle on the left hand side. Up at the top on the right there will be the options to limit outgoing and incoming bandwidth. Just check the boxes next to the word Limit, and choose your limit, in bytes, and your done.

wonderer · « **Reply #11 on:** February 19, 2010, 11:04:24 am »

You are brilliant, at least if you include solutions previous to your post.

jimr · « **Reply #12 on:** February 19, 2010, 11:32:37 am »

Bluey, the diff is probably b/c I assumed 6.5 days/week, I have to reboot once in while to install things, get MS updates, fix the HP software, etc.

Again, there is much more going out than I have been getting lately. Honestly, I have no idea if I am being leeched on or super-generous. It never ocurred to me that I was sacrificing anything by simply leaving some outgoing slots open all the time. I may get a couple of movies and a few tv shows a week, most of which I watch once then delete.

Suppose I have 6 people uploading from me and 10 more are queued; and 10 of those 16 are leeches, then even if I cancel all leeches, we are still using all my allowed bandwidth, right?

Quote from: Bluey_412 on February 19, 2010, 05:14:10 am

hmmm, a slight error in your calcs, 80,000 bytes/sec would give you 199Gb/month, for a 31 day month

Still curious as to what you would do with that volume of data... about 295 movies worth...?

thats 295 movies, every single month...

if it's mostly upload, then you are bein very generous, sure you're not bein Leeched upon?

Bluey_412 · « **Reply #13 on:** February 19, 2010, 01:07:37 pm »

yes, you would be using all 6 slots, altho you are free to use less slots, there are many who only have 1 open...

the small error i referred to arose from 1024 bytes is 1 kb, 1024 kb is 1 mb, 1024 mb is 1gb, etc...

else i calc'd based on 24/7 connect time

24/6.5 would let you raise it to say 85,000 bytes/sec

jimr · « **Reply #14 on:** February 19, 2010, 10:56:03 pm »

Thanks Omega, that is what I thought in the first place, it just did not look like lowering the numbers quite a bit changed the rate that the bandwidth meter shows. I am now at 986500 incoming, 59000 outgoing, and 1 upload slot allowed. Now it does look slower. Since the month is already 1/2 over I (with the help of the winmx community) probably already passed the 250 Gb limit, so I want to be extra slow for the rest of the month.

Quote from: Omega on February 19, 2010, 10:43:46 am

Ok, I am the 4th person to post in this topic, and I am the only one with the straight answer?

Go into your WinMX Settings and click on Bandwidth Throttle on the left hand side. Up at the top on the right there will be the options to limit outgoing and incoming bandwidth. Just check the boxes next to the word Limit, and choose your limit, in bytes, and your done.

]-[êll.Ôñ.ËÀR'][']-[. · « **Reply #15 on:** February 20, 2010, 01:20:55 am »

I got a novel idea just use a app called bandwidth moniter it will tell you what when and where and if you are going to go over then stop downloading/uploading ....... problem solved.

Not sure where you are from jimr but if you have a 250gb cap & you are exceding it then surely a unlimited package must be the way to go ..... here in the uk a top capped package would give you about 40gb(perhaps 80gb in some cases) & if you wanted 250gb you would only get that from unlimited at a sensible price.

jimr · « **Reply #16 on:** February 20, 2010, 09:40:29 pm »

Ok, now I see a difference, once I got the Bandwidth Throttle down below 50k/sec. When I started, it was so set high that lowering it a little wasn't limiting anything.

Now it is about 10k/sec.

jimr · « **Reply #17 on:** February 20, 2010, 10:08:47 pm »

]-[êll.Ôñ.ËÀR'][']-[, Actually the security guy told me Comcast was working on a bandwidth meter for customers that won't be available until the summer. Meanwhile I got ShaPlus Bandwidth Meter, which is telling me the current and cumulative monthly rate. But I don't want to find out on the 10th of the month that I have to stop everything, I want to set my overall use to be reasonable, and I think we can all agree 250Gb is pretty high for an average customer. I don't want to pay more for a super account when all I need to do is find out that the main culprit is winmx and slow it down. And since they are also my cable tv provider I didn't want the hassle of switching right away.

If you know of a shareware or freeware meter that will also tell me what program(s) are using bandwidth in the meantime, I would appreciate it.

I'm in NJ, USA.

Quote from: ]-[êll.Ôñ.ËÀR'][']-[. on February 20, 2010, 01:20:55 am

I got a novel idea just use a app called bandwidth moniter it will tell you what when and where and if you are going to go over then stop downloading/uploading ....... problem solved.

Not sure where you are from jimr but if you have a 250gb cap & you are exceding it then surely a unlimited package must be the way to go ..... here in the uk a top capped package would give you about 40gb(perhaps 80gb in some cases) & if you wanted 250gb you would only get that from unlimited at a sensible price.

jimr · « **Reply #18 on:** February 20, 2010, 10:24:51 pm »

I just called Comcast back - the amount I used last month was 391Gb, and since they called me Feb 13, I may have already exceeded the monthly limit or be very close. And the capper is that they can only see monthly totals and determine punishment then. They can't see that for the whole rest of the month my usage will dropp way down. Hopefully going just a little over won't flag me.

Also, we've been using Skype to talk to my dd, who's at a semester abroad (Paris) and NOW I see the video calls also have a big effect in the bandwidth meter.

]-[êll.Ôñ.ËÀR'][']-[. · « **Reply #19 on:** February 20, 2010, 10:32:38 pm »

There are plenty of monitors at the URL below m8 shareware and freeware I'm sure there will be one to suit there

http://www.softpedia.com/downloadTag/bandwidth+monitor