bitcoin-qt client network bandwidth usage

[lano1106]

By running the client, I understand that I become a node in the p2p network. I have installed it rougly 10 days ago and I just realized minutes ago that it is uploading roughly 20GB/day. It says that I have 79 active connections to the network. With this rate, I am going to bust my monthly bandwith limit.

Or maybe it is cgminer or a mix of both. Not sure which one. I'll investigate. Which application in the BTC ecosystem is know to be network hungry?

Is there any way to limit how much network the client is using.

[jackrats]

Are you certain that the 20GB/day is from the Bitcoin client? I wouldn't expect it to use near that much b/w.

[lano1106]

no I just edited the initial post of the thread. Could be cgminer or a mix of both. This is scary stuff. I have a peak of 31 GB upload for April 9 (maybe insider transactions before wednesday crash). Before installing bitcoin software, my average daily upload was 0.01 GB!

I have 2 pcs mining.

[Melonhead]

You can usually limit upload speed with a setting in your router. It depends on your router's firmware. I know that DD-WRT can do it. I suspect that various stock firmware also has that ability. It might under something called QOS (Quality of Service). Personally, I use the Traffic Shaping feature of IPCOP. I limit my upload speed to 500 kbps (a bit over 60KB per second), and I typically have 50-60 peers. They have to share the 60KB, so each is getting on average about 1KB per second.

[lano1106]

thank you for the tip.

I also found a small tool called 'trickle' that do limit a process bandwidth usage.