[Box Backup] Change in network usage characteristics in 0.08?

Per Thomsen boxbackup@fluffy.co.uk
Fri, 26 Nov 2004 22:02:22 -0800


I have noticed in the last couple of weeks (after I installed 0.08) that 
traffic with my box-clients has changed its behaviour: Now I have a 
constant traffic of about 30-50 kbps outbound to the client machines. Is 
this expected behaviour?

I have 3 clients that run over the connection in question. The traffic 
seems to be steady at about the same rate all the time, according to MRTG.

I stopped bbstored, and the traffic stopped immediately. As soon as I 
start bbstored again, the traffic returns, so I'm pretty sure it's 
bbstored that's transmitting something.

Here is a snippet (names changed to protect the innocent) of nstats 
output from my firewall for a brief period of time (about 10 minutes):

Source Address      Destination Address    SPort    DPort          
#      bytes
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
boxsrv.example.com   client-1.isp.com      2201     2155       2002     
951488
boxsrv.example.com   client-2.isp.com      2201     3568       1256     
493149
boxsrv.example.com   client-2.isp.com      2201     1214       1256     
493059
boxsrv.example.com   client-1.isp.com      2201     2580        241     
239476
client-1.isp.com       boxsrv.example.com  2155     2201       1840     
182018
client-2.isp.com       boxsrv.example.com  3568     2201       1209     
122606
client-2.isp.com       boxsrv.example.com  1214     2201       1207     
122487
client-1.isp.com       boxsrv.example.com  2580     2201        184      
15255

So, from what I can read, the bbstored server is sending between 4 and 5 
times the amount of bytes back over the wire that it is receiving. That 
seems odd, given that the systems are backing up, and not restoring.

According to bbstored logs, it seems that there are simply backups to be 
taken *all* the time from these clients.

That doesn't seem right to me, especially since these computers are 
business computers that aren't being used at night. They have long idle 
periods, which should result in long periods of no connection to the 
bbstored server.

Has anyone else noticed anything like this? My server is a Linux build 
on Fedora Core2, and the clients in question are cygwin clients.

Thanks in advance for any insights,
Per

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Per Reedtz Thomsen | Reedtz Consulting, LLC | F: 209 883 4119
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