How much network traffic does the bitcoin client generate?

[TheOddShot]

... for those of us who are on limited internet connections, or pay on a data basis.

Thanks,

Trevor

[Xunie]

30 MB to get the initial blocks or something, I'm not sure, someone needs to confirm this.
Also: It shouldn't take that much up beside the regular "new block" broadcast.
Maybe 100 kb/h?

[laszlo]

I think it is similar to IRC.. I haven't measured it but the bandwidth requirements are very low.  The messages are very short like chat messages, just containing a few bytes.  Nodes ask for addresses all the time, and new blocks are broadcast regularly, so think of it like being on a few very active IRC channels where people are talking all day.

It is however very active on the disk I/O because it flushes the database to disk every transaction - this is what iTunes does too every time you change tracks.

[theymos]

I measured this a few months ago (over 24 hours):

    * Bytes sent without BitCoin: 2475590 (2.4MiB)
    * Bytes received without BitCoin: 2798454 (2.7MiB)
    * Bytes sent with BitCoin (not port forwarded): 2210854 (2.1MiB)
    * Bytes received with BitCoin (not port forwarded): 4699445 (4.5MiB)
    * Bytes sent with BitCoin (port forwarded): 20879040 (19.9MiB)
    * Bytes received with BitCoin (port forwarded): 10954438 (10.4MiB)

So almost nothing.

[TheOddShot]

thats ok - I'm not worried about disk i/o - although if I was using a SSD based netbook, that might be an issue.  When travelling, I use a "wireless broadband" link - as they call them here in Australia - internet via mobile phone. Mine has a 1Gb per month limit, adequate for getting emails on the road, but not heavy p2p usage!  Just wanted to be sure that using bitcoin on that link would not max me out in a few days!

Thanks,

Trevor

[Xunie]

thats ok - I'm not worried about disk i/o - although if I was using a SSD based netbook, that might be an issue.  When travelling, I use a "wireless broadband" link - as they call them here in Australia - internet via mobile phone. Mine has a 1Gb per month limit, adequate for getting emails on the road, but not heavy p2p usage!  Just wanted to be sure that using bitcoin on that link would not max me out in a few days!

Thanks,

Trevor

Note that the statistics theymos gave can and in my opinion mostly is just keepalive messages and not actual block sharing data.
If you turn on Bitcoin every 24 hours or so? I don't think it should max out your datalimit.

Then again, only way to find out is to try it!