[AccessD] A sad tale of wifi hotspot interference

Sun Oct 2 08:23:42 CDT 2022

Wow, five times a day? That suggests that the programmer(s) of said
software are not all that confident in their latest build. 😀

On Sun, Oct 2, 2022 at 9:13 AM John Colby <jwcolby at gmail.com> wrote:

> Not the point my friend.  The point is that I had to find them as
> problems.  And most of them I actually use, absent Edge and OneDrive.
>
> I found an article pointing to the scheduler, and from there I started
> looking at what all the tasks were, at which point I discovered that dozens
> of things are pinging servers to check for updates.  I mean it is obvious
> that they would (once I thought about that subject). What was not obvious
> is that they would ping them so often.
>
> But how often are they pinging, and how do I change the frequency.  The
> answer to that was the scheduler.  All the jobs to cause the server checks
> are right there in one place.  Dozens and dozens of scheduled jobs which
> check for updates.
>
> From there I had to decide if checking every time I log in is insane, what
> would be a sane frequency?  And some of these things have many tasks which
> do the exact same thing.  Check in every time I log in.  Oh yea and every
> day.  And when the computer is idle.  And every day of the week?  Some were
> even 4 or five times a day!!!  REALLY?
>
> So I had to just go through these scheduled tasks and do a major culling of
> them.
>
> So the point is that most of these things are actually useful and
> occasionally used, but checking for updates 5 times a day is insane.  And
> yes, I found one doing that.
>
> On Sun, Oct 2, 2022 at 7:27 AM Arthur Fuller <fuller.artful at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Dear John,
> > (Golly, I never thought I'd write a Dear John letter in my life, but when
> > you're 75 you'll never know what'll happen next.
> > Why don't you simply remove these bothersome pieces of software? It's not
> > difficult.
> >
> > On Sun, Oct 2, 2022 at 7:00 AM John Colby <jwcolby at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Wow, just wow!!!  Things are never as simple as we expect.  Much more
> > > startup data usage.  Tracked down a TON MORE, which are startup tasks
> for
> > > everything that runs.  Pretty much every app that wants to update
> itself
> > > sets a startup task.  Many of which run every day, every login, or even
> > > whenever the computer is idle.  Google, Firefox, Edge, VS CODE,
> DropBox,
> > > OneDrive, Office etc etc ad nauseum.  All of these going out to check
> if
> > > they have any updates.  These are scheduled tasks, the task created by
> > the
> > > installer (or Windows if it is a windows app).  It's no damned wonder
> > there
> > > is a 10 minute burst of activity on my WAN connection every time I log
> > in.
> > > Which is my hotspot when I'm on the road.
> > >
> > > This activity is (at least when throttled?) about 600kbit/second, which
> > > translates to about 4.5 mbyte / minute.  Which goes on for a loooong
> > time.
> > >
> > > Office for example checks every time I log on.  On a day to day basis I
> > may
> > > not even use Office.  but hey, it is checking.  I NEVER use Edge.  But
> > hey,
> > > it is (was) checking.  I NEVER use OneDrive, but hey, it WAS checking.
> > In
> > > truth, over a wired internet I never cared.  But over my hotspot, which
> > is
> > > my norm now, I very much care.  We shall see how much of a dent I have
> > made
> > > in my hotspot usage.  As I mentioned previously, I was hitting my 15 gb
> > cap
> > > midway through my billing month.  All so Google etc could make sure it
> > had
> > > the latest updates 10 times a day.
> > >
> > > On Sat, Oct 1, 2022 at 1:34 AM John Colby <jwcolby at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > As some of you may know, I use my phone's wifi hotspot a lot.  I have
> > > > Verizon and each line (phone) gets 15gb of data before being severely
> > > > throttled, as in ~800kbit / second down.  Understand that my phone
> > itself
> > > > is not throttled, I have unlimited data directly on the phone.  Once
> > > > throttled, just opening anything in the browser on the computer
> becomes
> > > > excruciatingly slow.
> > > >
> > > > I don't watch youtube or other videos on my computer, doing so on my
> > > > phone, exactly because of the above facts.
> > > >
> > > > For two months running, I was hit with wifi hotspot throttling about
> > mid
> > > > (billing) month.  WTF over?  I went on a quest to figure out why.
> > Using
> > > > task manager, and from inside of there using resource manager I
> > > discovered
> > > > that in any browser, videos often start playing as soon as I open
> many
> > > > different web sites.  Usually these are advertisements, though not
> > > always -
> > > > I browse a lot of news sites and they want to feed me video to go
> along
> > > > with the text.  I use mostly Firefox and so I figured out how to turn
> > off
> > > > automatic launching of video.  That helped immensely, but did not
> > > entirely
> > > > fix the problem.
> > > >
> > > > Believe it or not, Dropbox was a major contributor to the problem.
> The
> > > > updater (for updating dropbox itself, not the files stored in
> dropbox)
> > > is a
> > > > data consuming pig.  According to folks on the dropbox forum, since
> > 2016
> > > > (at least) people have been complaining about this, without any
> > > meaningful
> > > > response to the complaints, other than "you agreed in the EULA to let
> > us
> > > > update dropbox anytime and as much as we want."
> > > >
> > > > According to some folks, the updater.exe can consume hundreds of
> > > megabytes
> > > > a day.  I can't personally validate that claim but I will say I see
> > > dropbox
> > > > consuming hundreds of megabits / second essentially non-stop for long
> > > > periods, so I have no reason to doubt that it adds up to a number
> like
> > > that.
> > > >
> > > > Dropbox simply refuses to add any "manual update" option.  I can turn
> > off
> > > > the services and set them to manual, but the updater.exe still runs,
> > even
> > > > though it is not visible in the startup stuff in task manager.  The
> > only
> > > > way to disable it is to close it in task manager, then rename the
> exe.
> > > > Reboot and... all is now quiet on my hotspot WAN.
> > > >
> > > > My Verizon billing cycle starts around the second and so I will get a
> > > > fresh 15gb of data.  It will be interesting to see if these measures
> > > solve
> > > > my problems.  I will say that before this investigation I had a
> > non-stop
> > > > 600 kbit / second of wireless data traffic, and now I have zero
> > > > continuous.
> > > >
> > > > Oddly, even editing a message like this in GMail causes continuous
> > spikes
> > > > of data, probably due to constant crap that gmail does as I write an
> > > > email.  Stop typing and the data spikes stop.
> > > >
> > > > I used to think that 15gb was a lot.  Not any more.  I now open task
> > > > manager and keep an eye on the wan usage while on my hotspot.
> > Throttling
> > > > is a royal PITA.  If there is no constant data being used by one of
> > these
> > > > data hogs, then ordinary browsing is easy and fast.  Not so much when
> > > some
> > > > app is grabbing 600k of my (throttled) 800kbps.
> > > >
> > > > If any of you have run into this and have other helpful suggestions
> > > please
> > > > do chime in.
> > > > --
> > > > John W. Colby
> > > > Colby Consulting
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > John W. Colby
> > > Colby Consulting
> > > --
> > > AccessD mailing list
> > > AccessD at databaseadvisors.com
> > > https://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd
> > > Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Arthur
> > --
> > AccessD mailing list
> > AccessD at databaseadvisors.com
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> > Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com
> >
>
>
> --
> John W. Colby
> Colby Consulting
> --
> AccessD mailing list
> AccessD at databaseadvisors.com
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> Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com
>

-- 
Arthur