Bandwidth Abuse
 

This is an open letter to all Gnutella Developers

Three days ago I recieved a letter from my cable company warning me that I was using excessive bandwidth. Obviously this was due to the fact that I ran Gnucleus 24/7 as a dedicated supernode sharing my 20Gb media drive (movies and MP3's). Since losing my internet connection is not an option I turned off Gnucleus and plan on staying offline from the network for at least 2 months. The bandwidth usage when I was running Gnucleus is my responsiblity and I place no blame on it.

However, during the last 3 days my firewall logs indicate that I have recieved over 250,000 attempts (with my computer being shut down at night) at accessing my computer on the port I had dedicated to Gnutella. This represents a huge amount of bandwidth and possibly alot of headaches for me with my ISP. This is also resulting in slower network performance for me than what I normaly could expect when not running a Gnutella client. The effect on my computer is similar to that of a DoS attack on a web server. My internet speeds are suffering and I need to quickly come up with a explanation to my ISP for the continuing high bandwidth usage.

I would like to suggest that ALL developers make sure that their clients don't hammer computers not using the network with download requests. This harms the computers being hammered and also slows down the entire Gnutella network.

While I won't be on the network for a few months while I duck under the radar of my ISP but when I do return I won't be able to share much (especially not popular files) if it will mean being hammered with download requests for days.

Have a look through the BearShare Labs Forum.
You will find many posts on this same subject.
They will not necessarily be very recent comments, so you must dig a little. It is for sure not a problem which you alone are experiencing.

BearShare is likely to be one of the servents responsible for those requests.

BearShare... argh :(

However, they promised to fix it in their latest version.

Personal opinion about the ISP: I'd write them back to ask them where in their agreements it states what "excessive bandwidth" is, and whether there's an actual bandwidth limit for your type of account. They may argue you're not allowed to run a "server", but that's not the sole function of your Gnutella client, it's part of its whole operation. it is just like MS Messenger, AOL IM or ICQ also have functions that require incoming connections as part of it all.

Nevertheless, more on the topic itself, yes, because of how Gnutella constantly communicates with other Gnutella clients, it does take a fair bit of bandwidth, especially with more connections and shared files. If is a burden to you, which it appears to be, I'd recommend using a Gnutella client that uses "Ultrapeers" (currently, LimeWire and Swapper). When your client functions a leaf, a more capable Gnutella client will handle most of the load for you.

Certainly wouldn't like to see you "disappear from the scene". Good luck though!

While being a supernode does use some bandwidth, I am guessing that most of your bandwidth was going towards the uploads instead of just the network connections. If that was the case then setting up your client as a leaf might not make a difference as it would just allow for more bandwidth to be spent on uploads.

As for the connection attempts, I would agree with Taliban that it is most likely bearshare clients.
I noticed the same thing happening with all the connection attempts. I made a program that just listens for connections and logs them. After closing the gnutella client and starting this program I was pounded with download requests. Almost all of them came from bearshare clients and were constant (ie client connected, i closed connection, it would reconnect ).

those *******s, they have ads all over about how fast their service is, then you sign up and now they limit you?
if you pay for fast speed, and they advertised it when you purchased, then they need to give you that speed and bandwidth, or sue them to the hilt
if they dont stop advertising fast access and bandwidth, like "1.5 megabits per second download" in their stupid ads, does that say its only 1.5 for a jpg file every day? *******s, sue them and sue them big time! make everyone know out there that cable modems suck

Hummm, I have upload at that speed many times when people are sharing.

I agree with you here that cable modems such, but damnit there isn't anything else out there for me at my location right now, that all I can do. Sorry for being a *******.

I have also shared with you guys alot of mp3/movies from your clients and I don't mind at all, it the way I am. I only use the program, I don't abuse it. I have also got nocked off or refused from alot of you guys and limewire, hell I do mind yes, when I don't stop letting you guys come in and tap files from me, never once did I ever stop a upload from uploading from anywhere. There are times that my computer freezed up when I was low in RAM at the time and basiclly saying I had to crash party it.

We all should stop fighting about the crap and just get along. Please.

I don't mind sharing to anyone, but is that just me and because I have a good heart, hmmmm it seems that way sometimes. I see everything getting better soon for everyone. IMO

Jay

I have a bearshare client connecting to me requesting a movie every 45sec 24/7.. I deleted this movie from my hd [space issues, I share over 90gb] months ago.. Isnt that a bit rediculous? The originating ip is the same.. On the plus side its useful in the work im doing on developing a gnutella client of my own =)