using MSN messenger is like downloading 338 bytes every second

[fanton]

I am on a tight budget now with download/upload limits from my isp. I have been downloading like a hog. I tried to use a software to monitor the amound because I don't really belive I am downloading that much.

It seems that microsoft has the networking traffic monitor built in. You have have to tweak. Using alt + ctrl + del to get the taskmanager, then networking tab, then add the Bytes Sent and Bytrs Received from view set collumns. Then from Option I clicked show cummulative data.

With msn account running I tried to steal a couple of numbers that were permanently updading in the window. It seems that MSN uses a continous connection having a 338 bytes per second.

Yahoo only sends when the user types soemthing in an presses enter. I will probably use Ethereal to see what's going on. If this is true, omgzorbzzbr. Those people only care about money! 

If my calculations are right, that means about 770 MB per month, or the quivalent of downloading fedora core cd 1 and the rescue cd every month!. Or a ISO CD, or a XVid DivX movie. And that is just by keeping MSN there in the taskbar.

What is even WORSE is that MSN runs in the background sometimes without letting the user know its there. That's a lost of wasting i think.

Yahoo probably download and uploads every a couple of seconds.

A 56 kb modem means 56 kilobits, that is 7 kB (or kilobytes)
MSN is downloading 338 bytes that is 2.7 kbits every second!

I don't know if my calculations are completely right. But it seems to be awfully dumb what their doing. WHY DO THEY NEED 338 bytes every second? Are they sending a huge jpg file back and forth? 

[modify]

actually my calculations are a bit wrong. and is more like a small transparet gif file that is send back and forth

[Sylpher]

338 bytes is quite small in todays world, and if it bothers you so much don't use it.

http://psacake.com/web/iu.asp

[Ishmael]

Odd... I was getting a couple of hundred bytes every, like, five seconds... adn I have mirc and such running too...

[fanton]

but if you are in a country where highest speed is 56kb / s, its taking up 20% of the bandwith. just to do nothing, that's a lot!

actually msn has about 42 million users so i found so about 14 GB per second wasted globally.

Ishmael, you're probably right. i was only using the account, not the messenger itself, i can't stand it. its slow, buggy, and runs in the background even when i'll tell not to! so I might be wrong, especially in the calculations.

338 is not a huge jpg file, but a small gif file. that's not bad. it just seems kind of useless all this overhead. yahoo has almost zero overhead!

[Sylpher]

Ever considered you may have spyware?

I removed MSN completely from my system because it was stuck permenantly in the background so I can't test it for myself... but, I still don't get exactly what you are trying to bring to light.. If your ISP has restricted you so tightly to where "wasting' bandwidth is a no go.. then don't use it.

[fanton]

its's not a big deal though.

i know its from msn because when i turned msn off, i get no more apparent downloading. i do not have spyware. i use firefox, and right now it keeps me safe. i have not had a spyware since a couple of months now. i keep checking with spybot. i had both yahoo and msn on.

with only yahoo on i get ZERO overhead. immediatly as i log into msn, i get about 300 bytes per second. its annoying because it useless ovehead, its not like eMule Kademlia, or e2dk, or something like that, its just sitting idle.

doesn't matter  :

[modify]

i cannot see your avatar, Sylpher

[Sylpher]

Mmm, I have my debates over how much of a heaven send Firefox is.

And look at that it is gone. I have been switching servers lately so little oddities will probobly pop up a lot like that. Guess some reuploading is needed. Thanks.

[Ishmael]

Hmm... well, there are regular bumps in the network traffic diagram, but otherwise it stays at the zero... but I don't know does windows measure the speed by the 11Mb the WLAN can traffic forth and back, or by the 2Mbps downstream ADSL... still, it's minimal, and the figures update like every five seconds.

[scotch]

338 bytes a second is about 5% of your dialup bandwidth, not 20%, and in any case, 1gb a month isn't much... I haven't heard of a download limit worse than 1gb a day. Ã, 338 bytes is 169 (unicode) characters, probably less than the length of this post... that isn't an unreasonable amount of information for a chat program to use... if you were idling in a couple of irc channels you'd probably use a similar amount of bandwidth.

[TheYak]

Also, for consideration, your calculations appear to assume that you're using MSN 24 hours a day during that month.  Unless you are, a more reasonable 16 hours a day would work out to 578 M per month, and (unless you're an IM-addict) a more likely 4 hours a day yields less than 150.  If you're being that nit-picky, you could find out whether your ISP is using real Megabytes as the limitation or the new, rounder 1,000,000 marketing standard.

If yahoo's got no overhead, then it would seem something to consider, but MSM is far less a culprit of bandwidth waste than a myriad of other things you do on the web.   

[Ozzie]

1gb a month isn't much... I haven't heard of a download limit worse than 1gb a day.

How's about 10GB a month?
You, don't live in Europe, right? However, I only speak for Germany....

And other than that, I think it's strange how much the MSN messenger needs. I mean, would it be 338 bytes a minute doing nothing, okay, but every second? For what does it need this? I think we all now that Microsoft is a bit dubious, maybe it's just the size it needs to spy...but I don't want to go in conspiracies now.

I see that it affects on the speed which is already very limited with a 56K modem....better just remove it. I actually just deactivated from the startup and I never saw it again....

[Ishmael]

Hm... yeah, do you have the "I allow Microsoft to anonymously collect information" thing enabled in Messenger options? That might cause the extra traffic...

[AGA]

NTL's cheaper packages (under 2Mbps) has a monthly limit of 3GB or so, scotch (you'd have to check, but it's something ridiculously low like that).

[auhsor]

For me I don't see MSN using much bandwidth, and it isn't continuous. Just small spikes. I sugest going through the msn options and turning off those side tabs and disabling the ads by using the MSN patch at mess.be. It might help, especially if you use msn 7 which has many ads as it would have to get less from the msn servers.

[Las Naranjas]

I have Gaim running constantly, and if it's on the MSN network, I'm sure it would be taking the same bandwidth.

And on your figures, that should be roughly 20-30 mb a day.

yet even with it running full time on at least one computer out of 5 on which the bandwidth is being measured, I can see days in the history my ISP has given me of 12 mb downloads and 3 mb uploads. Days where at least 5 people have been using the internet.

Is Gaim heavensent, I don't believe so.

[Pumaman]

NTL's cheaper packages (under 2Mbps) has a monthly limit of 3GB or so, scotch (you'd have to check, but it's something ridiculously low like that).

These cheapo broadband packages seem to rather defeat the point of broadband. You should be able to use it as much as you like, whenever you like -- if I had to be worrying about some monthly download limit then it'd be no better than the bad old days of dialup when you were only allowed to be connected for 5 hours a day.

[Ishmael]

I sugest going through the msn options and turning off those side tabs and disabling the ads by using the MSN patch at mess.be.

Ah, yes, I've done those. Got rid of it all. That might be why I get only spikes on the network traffic when everthing is idle...

[Blackthorne]

God, I hate MSN.



Bt

[fanton]

Damn, firefox died when visiting a webpage so I lost all I had to say. Let me remember.

Pumaman:
Pumaman is right! I switched from one ISP to the other to get more speed my old advertised 3Mbps and was actually about 700Mbps but Unlimited Download/Upload! My now one is 3Mbps as advertised but has a bandwith limit.
You need to bang your head on all those problems to learn how to deal with them in the future. Now I know
By the way, weren't the Olmesc of Aztecs that believed in a pumaman, or was it a jaguarman, I forgot.

Las Naranjas:
I am starting to believe Gaim has a problem. It might be that MSN is consuming SOME resources for sitting idle, but Gaim's implementation of MSN might be flawed.

Ozzie
That's my complaint precisely. Why taking bandwith for sitting idle? Because it probably adds up when sending or receiving messages. I am one of those old fashion prehistorical ppl that turn off all smilies and nuggets (whatever those things are, ewwww), or crabs, whatever. I turn them off. I wonder how much a loaded MSN takes

YakSpit :
My brother is. He hasn't turned off his eMule (OOPS ) and MSN for a couple of months now (2 months continously ). But I on the other hand have been using it until the day before yesterday, because I don't need it now.

Sylpher:
firefox just DIED!!! It always dies while visiting the same webage I dunno. Firefox has bigger problems than IE. IE is very safe, but more robust than Firefox. I will stick to Firefox just to give them more market share  Never say that one person makes no diffrence!