PF is eating my bandwidth

[horizon]

I'm finding PF is using 25-30MB per hour of bandwidth even though I'm not using online storage and I can see my friends are not connected.

Why is this and how can I stop it?

I want PF to upload/download only if one of us changes/adds/deletes a file.
Why would there be activity if no friend is connected?

[B.A.]

If you want to reduce the bandwidth:
-Check to which bandwidth you set PowerFolder(preferences/network)has to be below/exact your speed.
-Do not use Dyn-Dns address
-Disable http-tunnel (preferences/PowerFolder Pro settings/http-tunnel)
-Disable Nat traversal (preferences/network)
-Disable Relayed connections

Please be aware:
PowerFolder is using the last three settings to improve the connectivity
IF you disable all you have to be sure that all friends in your network have port 1337 open on all firewalls and routers,because this settings allow easy use but need some bandwidth. If you disable this settings and one of your fireinds does not setup his router/firewall you will lose connection. But if you keep relayed connections alive and remove the others this might help already to solve your problem.

What you might do also if you have fixed ips is the hardcore variant:
http://wiki.powerfolder.com/wiki/Setup_a_network_with_connections_to_only_selected_ clients

[horizon]

Thanks for your reply. I will try some of these.
I am currently using dyndns because otherwise I find I can't add friends. I get my friends to connect by giving them my dyndns ip address.

My friends will have dynamic IP addresses. If they subscribe to dyndns could we then use the dyndns IP addresses to use PF in the 'hardcore' mode ie LAN mode with LAN-IP's ?

[B.A.]

The problem is the DynDNS is turning you into some kind of supernode in the Powerfolder network. Which causes more traffic. Perhaps you can try to disable the Dyn -Dns and check if it has any bad influcenes.It might be that you need to wait a little bit longer until you recieve an invitation but if you really suffer from too much traffic this is the first step to reduce it strongly.


About Dyndns in the select nodes mode i dont know but i will ask some Devs

[horizon]

Thanks for your reply.
I have disabled all of the items suggested in your post above.
For the dyndns setting I have removed the entry in "My (Dynamic) DNS" - does this disable the Dyn-Dns?
There is still activity (downloads) happening - again even though my friends are not currently on line. The downloads are much less than previous, but still too much. I will quantify this later. Currently I don't have time to monitor the useage. At a guess it's maybe running at around 5MB/hr instead of around 30MB/h. I will monitor and confirm later.

[B.A.]

if the Dot is spinning on a Folder this does not mean that there is some download or upload activity. It also can mean that the Folder is scanned.
Downloads = files get downloaded in the Download panel.
Did you also disabled Nat traversal?

[horizon]

Nat traversal was unticked, as per the post above. I implemented all of the suggestions:
-Do not use Dyn-Dns address
-Disable http-tunnel (preferences/PowerFolder Pro settings/http-tunnel)
-Disable Nat traversal (preferences/network)
-Disable Relayed connections

There are no dots spinning.
My bandwidth was getting consumed very quickly.
So I installed NetLimiter. This is how I found that PF is the culprit.
No dots spin, but there is upload and download happening.
NetLimiter shows that PF is uploading and downloading.
I have three friends invited to folders, but none of these are currently on line.
But the uploads & downloads continue.

It uploads and downloads from a large number of connections.
It appears to jump around between 10-20 connections.

[horizon]

In a 10 minute test, PF downloaded 900kB and uploaded 230kB.
This is over 5MB/h download, which is an overhead that I can't afford.
There is no useful activity taking place from my point of view.

[B.A.]

May i ask which version of PowerFolder you use?
Because if you removed Dyn_DNS and all related settings and you are using PowerFolder 3.0.+ powerfolder is only connecting to 4 nodes to keep connection to the network. In the beginning PowerFolder is checking for new nodes.

The useful activity which is there is that PowerFolder is keeping alive the network. the alternative would be to route all connections over our servers. Btw if i look at the traffic which skype is creating without usefull activity the PowerFolder traffic is not even visible.
You can check your configuration file (users/username/.powerfolder(hiddensystem dir)) if there is still your dyndns inside.

[horizon]

Version Pro V 3.0.2

Hmm.
If you want to make a comparison, over a short connection time:
PF : 1,000 KB
SJPhone: 0.22 kB for a softphone on same PC

I will check the config file for dyndns.

Edit: dyndns settings in config file as follows:

dyndns.autoUpdate=false
dyndnsPassword=password
dyndnsUserName=username

Should I remove these three lines?

[B.A.]

Well SJPhone doesnt seem to be a peer to peer application so you cannot compare it with PowerFolder or Skype which need the network to find their users and if you have a few 100000 users than you need to exchange data to make sure that the users can be found. But i don't want to tell you that i love the overhead we need, or that i wouldn't like to reduce that. And we will do that. After we implanted the multisource download (3.1)we will start an optimization phase for the network.

[horizon]

I'm more interested in reducing the overhead of PF at this point than having an argument about whether SIP is peer to peer.

Is there anything else I can do wtih PF to reduce this overhead?
Should I remove the three lines from my config file with dyndns references?
What happens to the overhead if I:
1) share more folders?
2) add friends?

[B.A.]

1) share more folders?
Nothing
2) add friends?
Nothing

The overhead is in no relation to your files or friends it is just exchanging nodes

[horizon]

Does the chosen synchronization profile effect bandwidth overhead?
Eg currently all my folders are set to Mirror.
If I change to Project, will this reduce bandwidth?

[B.A.]

No but you could try to tell Powerfolder that you have less bandwidth at all.
For example you have DSL 16000 than tell Powerfolder you have only DSL 6000.

Which kind of connection you have?
And did you tried the silent mode?

May i ask how many connections you have right now?
Because if you have more than 4 while you disabled Dyn-DNS and no friends are online we would like to check your main Debug log,below you will find a description how to create them.


1) "Enable debug logging" under "Advanced settings". Make sure you have enabled "Show advanced options" under "General" to access that option.
2) The debug logs are usually located under "C:\Program Files\PowerFolder.com\PowerFolder\debug". In general the log files are located in a sub-directory called "debug" relative to the path where PowerFolder was executed.
3) Please use your favourite packaging program (e.g. zip, rar) to compress the whole debug directory or send us at least the primary debug file, which is named like "PowerFolder-YYYY-MM-DD.log.txt" to support(at)powerfolder.com .

Best Regards
Bernhard Rutkowsky

[horizon]

Netlimiter shows about 7 or 8 connections at present.

My connection is ADSL. Modem sync's at:
7000 kbps down
1000 kbps up

Edit: PF currently set to DSL 16000

I've enabled debug.
How long do you need it to run to collect adequate data?

[B.A.]

So please (go to preferences /network) and select dsl 6000 that should reduce the overhead already.

If this do not help.
log the debug of Powerfolder for 3-4 minutes that should be already enough to see what is going on.
Also we only need the Primary Debug log file.

[B.A.]

Thank you very much for your time.
This Post will show our developers how important it is to reduce the overhead as fast as possible.

[horizon]

Yes I meant to say that I now have dsl 6000 selected since your last post.
I am monitoring the overhead.
I will send a debug log also.

[horizon]

Debug log sent

[B.A.]

Thank you i will hand it over for review.

[horizon]

1) share more folders?
Nothing
2) add friends?
Nothing

The overhead is in no relation to your files or friends it is just exchanging nodes

Yesterday I added another folder to be shared.
I am now sharing 4 folders.
Netlimiter shows my download overhead has increased from about 3MB/h to 7MB/h. (This is when no friends are on line.)
Why has my overhead increased?

[B.A.]

Dear Horizon
The Overhead might vary this is not in a direct logical relationship with the number of shared folders while nobody is connected.

I have to excuse myself for giving you wrong information:
IF you have a lot of folders which are shared with a lot of friends(which are online) you might have slightly more overhead because that folders need to check if files have changed. But also this overhead will be in relation to the bandwidth assigned to PowerFolder

But that not fits your current problem which is just caused by some normal fluctuation. We don’t see this overhead as a problem, since the nature of our product requires network traffic. Other applications (comparable to our product) are consuming much more network traffic by doing much less (skype: 15 mb per hour tested one more time 10 min ago).

If you are calculating you traffic please be aware that PowerFolder is having a peak after start you should remove that if you are calculating average Bandwidth use. You cannot take the first 5 minutes and than go like 12 x 5 because that would just give you totally wrong values.

We are sorry that you have the feeling that this overhead is inappropriate, but we cannot change that right now.

This Overhead is not a security risk
This Overhead is in relation to the bandwidth assigned to PowerFolder
You should remove all items related to dyndns from the settings
You should disable Nat traversal (Preferences/Network)
You can establish a VPN with your friends/ clients and turn PowerFolder into Lan only mode(what would disable the overhead).

You might use the idle button
You might just switch of PowerFolder if you don’t need it.


Best regards Bernhard Rutkowsky

[horizon]

If you are calculating you traffic please be aware that PowerFolder is having a peak after start you should remove that if you are calculating average Bandwidth use.

The bandwidth I am reporting of an increase from 3 to 7MB/h is constant hourly overhead that occurs each hour. The peak download on startup is much more - This peak can be 10-20 MB. But I can put up with the startup peak.



You should remove all items related to dyndns from the settings
In the DynDNS tab, I have "My Dynamic DNS" empty and the checkbox for "keep dyndns up to date" unchecked. However my dyndns name and password are still in their boxes - I can't seem to clear them.



You should disable Nat traversal (Preferences/Network)
Already done.



You can establish a VPN with your friends/ clients and turn PowerFolder into Lan only mode(what would disable the overhead).
How do I establish a VPN - can you point me to some instructions?



You might use the idle button
I've never understood from the information on Powerfolder exactly what Idle does. Can you please explain some more.

Again - thanks for your help.
I am determined to try to make this work for me, as so far this is the most stable folder sharing platform that I have tried.

[B.A.]

Dear Horizon
Perhaps you need to completele remove PoweRfolder also (users/username/.powerfolder) and set it up from the scratch. Because the peak i have (20 Folder/6-10Friends/2m Cable/ no active Download-Upload(like your scenario) ) is < 500kb.
Perhaps you are for some strange reason stil a supernode.

For Vpn perhaps hamachi is a good solution since it is easy to setup and use:

https://secure.logmein.com/products/hamachi/list.asp

Also the basic version of hamachi is free.

best Regards
Bernhard Rutkowsky

[horizon]

Dear Horizon
Perhaps you need to completele remove PoweRfolder also (users/username/.powerfolder) and set it up from the scratch. Because the peak i have ... is < 500kb.
Perhaps you are for some strange reason stil a supernode.

I might try a re-install- I would like to have only 500kb/h.

However, if I remove and then re-install PowerFolder, is there a way that I can do this without causing my friends to have to download my shared folders again?

Eg, if I leave the invitation files in the shared folders, will the re-installed PF recognise these and automatically look for and find my friends and the existing shared folders?

OR...

Will I need to send new invitations and create new shares? (Which will mean my friends have to download the files again via PF.)

[B.A.]

I don't want to make you wrong hope. the data per hour will be higher than 500kb but the starting peak will be smaller.(at my computer <500kb)

IF you want to reinstall Powerfolder and you want to rejoin the folder again:

1.)
Go to c:/users/username/.powerfolder (hidden system files) backup teh following files:
the .nodes file
and the .mykey file

to keep the other files would not help because you want to reset your system.

2.)
after that delete this folder(c:/users/username/.powerfolder) and simply reinstall powerfolder. That should kill all settings which might be causing you to be a supernode.

4.)
Copy the two files back into the Folder which you deleted manually and restart powerfolder.

5.)
Simply rejoin the Folders you were a member in before.
All data should be recognized as synced and now additional downloads should be needed. (please be aware that you have to place the rejoined folder at the exact same position on your HDD)


The friends and your identity will be added again into PowerFolder by copy the mentioned files back into the .Powerfolder directory, the folders needs to be rejoined (invitation should be in the folder)

best regards
Bernhard Rutkowsky