Istaria's bandwidth usage.

[Evester]

I used to play Istaria 2-3 years ago, with a sub-par internet connection and sub-par laptop computer. Back then, I know for certain that Istaria didn't use too much bandwidth at all while connected. Even if one played for 10 hours a day for 20 days of the month, you wouldn't even go over 6-9 GB overall for the month.

But now I have a problem. Since I re-download Istaria and have been playing it for the past 2 weeks, my Internet usage has skyrocketed. I don't think it should be possible for the Istaria client to use upwards to 2.5 to 4 GB of usage in one day, which is what I'm told is happening this time. That's Not even if you were connected 24/7, should an online game take this much in one day, especially not a game as well aged as Istaria. This is occurring even on days when Istaria's the only Internet usage outside of normal web browsing (no streaming or downloading). I have run virus tests, adware scans, etc. to rule out those as a possible bandwidth drain.

So I have a few questions; hopefully someone's had this problem or knows the answer.

1) What kind of bandwidth should Istaria be drawing?
2) Is it affected by certain settings, such as audio/video?
3) If I turn down the settings to minimal quality, would that greatly improve bandwidth usage?
4) Is there anything else I can do to tone it down?

This huge draw on bandwidth is interfering with my shared Internet plan, unfortunately. I'll need to find a solution, or my existence in Istaria could be jeopardized.

[Dhalin]

1) What kind of bandwidth should Istaria be drawing?
2) Is it affected by certain settings, such as audio/video?
3) If I turn down the settings to minimal quality, would that greatly improve bandwidth usage?
4) Is there anything else I can do to tone it down?

Are you sure nothing else is being done in the network?

Are you accounting for downloading the original game and its updates?

And changing graphics settings does not affect network usage, that is all done Client-side.

Isn't the world stored locally at least most of it? Are you visiting guild communities (IE: player-built homes) often? Are you browsing player-built storage structures often?

Edit: Another thing to do, run Istaria in Windowed Mode and bring up Task Manager, and switch to the Network Usage tab and see how much bandwidth exactly Istaria is using when. Keep an eye on the window and look for spikes.

[Cegaiel]

Are you accounting for downloading the original game and its updates?

Thats what I was wondering. My Game folder is 3.55 Gb with just Istaria installed and 3.57Mb with Map Pack Installed. So at the very least, your first initial install plus patcher updates would've been 3.55 Gb. The first initial install might have been a big sacrafice, so play lightly until next month. Then you should be good to go.

I was watching my network usage for a short time, while standing idle in Dalimond and it hardly moved. Things like opening the Vault (only first time), visiting settlements, might jump it up a little, but overall, this is a pretty low bandwidth game, I think.

[Dhalin]

Not to mention if you really did download 2-4GB during a day (depending on your download speed) you would surely notice it in terms of latency.

If you've got, say, 3Mbps DSL or something, I think you'd know it if you really downloaded a few GB of stuff over some hours.

Not to mention, downloading at maximum speed on 3Mbps, it would take you a minimum of 3 hours to download 4GB anyways.

[Evester]

Are you sure nothing else is being done in the network?

Are you accounting for downloading the original game and its updates?

And changing graphics settings does not affect network usage, that is all done Client-side.

Isn't the world stored locally at least most of it? Are you visiting guild communities (IE: player-built homes) often? Are you browsing player-built storage structures often?

Edit: Another thing to do, run Istaria in Windowed Mode and bring up Task Manager, and switch to the Network Usage tab and see how much bandwidth exactly Istaria is using when. Keep an eye on the window and look for spikes.

Nothing else was happening on the network during these days, only Istaria.

The date of the original download and all the updates, it was a 14GB day. 14GBs!

I travel all over the place, since I'm always lairshaping or crafting--Falathien, Bristugo (where my lair is), occasionally Morning Light, etc...but not enough to account for gigabytes of network usages.

I'm going to check my network usage and monitor for spikes next time I run Istaria--that's a good plan. I play in Windowed mode already.

Ultimately, the high bandwidth issue seems to have died down. The usage spiked on the day I downloaded and started to use Istaria, so I'm investigating whether something piggybacked during the download, or perhaps it was during the half-download of Perfect World International (another game I thought of starting again, but changed my mind mid-install). No malware or viruses were detected, but this is an early version of Windows 7 we're talking about.

Since I've given my computer a good scrubbing, and I've been completely disconnecting from the Net at night, or shutting everything down completely (not just putting the computer to sleep), the bandwidth usage has dropped to an average of 400-600 MBs a day. I'm still not downloading or streaming, so this is still mainly Istaria we're talking about, aside from regular social browsing. And this is acceptable, since my ISP just upped my limit to 150 GB a month. I'm starting to suspect someone had wormed their way into my wireless connection and was using it, since I live in a 12-floor apartment building with 500 other residents.

I was honestly just wishing to know how much Istaria is supposed to be using. But now I know it's not normal for that kind of bandwidth to be sucked up by using this game, so ultimately I'm considering just doing a fresh reinstall of my OS and getting a better firewall. -_-

Thanks for the input, everyone.

[Malicore]

why not protect your wifi connection. then no one can piggyback on your connection. Istaria doesn't use that much bandwidth in a month, let alone a day

sounds more likely someone is using your connection, to download movies to save on their own bandwidth

[hallucin8]

I was honestly just wishing to know how much Istaria is supposed to be using.

Just had a look at my usage and on a weekend I could rack up 2Gb/day easy and a weekday could up be to 1.5Gb
That's not likely to be all Istaria, but might give you an idea.
Overall, my total monthly usage is likely to be around 30Gb with a heavy month closer to 100. My internet is not that great though, so getting to 100Gb is rather time consuming.

[Northwind]

I watched the istaria.exe process for like 5-10 minutes, done several ports and recalls (Augh, Kirasanct, Crucita). Being alone on the screen, no fighting involved

Not sure how conclusive it is, but the process itself didn't topped at more than 11KB/s, most of the time using between 0.5 (Augh pad) and 6KB/s (in Kirasanct)
Doing some math at top consumption we get 40MB per hour bandwidth usage.

As i said, no idea how bandwidth usage is affected by the number of entities on the screen or by the actions performed.

[Sindala]

At the moment im working in Australia and having to use a 'Dongle' on the Telestra network.
now I must stress that this site and the game are the only things ive used this comp for over the past few weeks.

I have to agree the usage seems rather high.
In 2 weeks of casual playing, 4 hours a night and AFK about half of that.
I used a 4gb usage allowance......now that's ALOT!!!!

This must be a recent change as I defo would notice this back in the UK as I pay for my usage their too when I was there, but never went over 2gb (and I was ingame a lot back then.....ask Chas.)

This needs looking into quickly as I really don't want to pay $80 (cost of 4gb usage) every 2 weeks just to be able to play....more to the point I won't.

Too many people on different networks are seeing this to be 'our side' problem wouldn't you agree?

[Northwind]

I think, it is only a guess, that the problem is not Istaria but the way w7 and w8 are designed to work, aka access the internet alot.
This can be tested configuring the embeded firewall to block all except istaria.exe and javaw.exe processes

Also, the sites are now designed considering everyone has broadband access as opposed 10-15 years ago when everyone was on dial-up - so internet browsing might have a big impact on bandwidth used.

Anyways, i think that devs could stop by and shed some light on this matter.

[Northwind]

I've took my own advice and set firewall to block all outgoing connections except the ones initiated by Istaria.exe and javaw.exe.
The restuls are 5.2MB download and 0.9MB upload for 65 minutes with 2 istaria clients logged in simultaneously, one mostly idling in Augh, but with some ports in Lerena and Morning Light (plot heavy settlements on Order) while the other client was doing some heavy deforesting in Yew Forest.
No patching was involved, both clients were loaded when i activated the firewall and blocked everything else except the Istaria clients.

Seems that i exagerated in my previous post with 40MB per hour.

Capture11.jpg

[Dhalin]

Does that firewall also block things like Windowsupdate?

I'm thinking maybe the OP had virus updates, windows updates, etc going on in the background.

I know that sometimes Microsoft likes to wait until 10+ patches and then release them all at once.

[Northwind]

if you set it to Block All (on outgoing) it will block anything that doesn't have a rule explicitly allowing a connection out.

[Guaran]

I've took my own advice and set firewall to block all outgoing connections except the ones initiated by Istaria.exe and javaw.exe.
The restuls are 5.2MB download and 0.9MB upload for 65 minutes with 2 istaria clients logged in simultaneously, one mostly idling in Augh, but with some ports in Lerena and Morning Light (plot heavy settlements on Order) while the other client was doing some heavy deforesting in Yew Forest.

So from those numbers, playing 24 hours a day for 30 days would come out to about 3.6Gb downloaded, 720Mb uploaded for a solid month of Istaria.

Can you do some additional testing where you port around say once every 10 minutes for 1 hour. For 3 or the 6 ports over the course of an hour, be sure to go someplace with a dense player owned building population.

@Evester From the looks of this, 14Gb in one day is very unlikely to be Istaria. Maybe 4Gb of it was since you did an initial download, but not all 14Gb. If you have wifi, someone is most likely borrowing your internet connection. Plug your computer directly into the cable modem, and disonnect the wifi router completely. Then check the bandwidth usage again after playing like this for a day or so.

[Evester]

@Evester From the looks of this, 14Gb in one day is very unlikely to be Istaria. Maybe 4Gb of it was since you did an initial download, but not all 14Gb. If you have wifi, someone is most likely borrowing your internet connection. Plug your computer directly into the cable modem, and disonnect the wifi router completely. Then check the bandwidth usage again after playing like this for a day or so.

Ah, I wish. My router is in another room; I'd have to drill a hole in the wall to plug it in physically or get a cord umpteen million feet long. Old apartment building--one cable hookup, and it's in the living room, and the computer is in a bedroom. In any case, disconnecting from the wireless connection at night completely, before sending the computer into sleep mode and/or shutting off the computer, seems to have majorly cut down the daily usage. I'm going to change the password as well, though I suspect whoever's done this didn't get in because they guessed the default gibberish password Cogeco gave me.

I cannot for the life of me figure out why the high daily usage and my return to Istaria began on the same day, however. Coincidence, perhaps. The 14Gb is probably Istaria and the half-download of Perfect World combined, though the following 3-4GB daily usage was definitely not ordinary. My issue's been mostly resolved by now. I can't say for sure obviously, but I'm putting my money on a wi-fi hijacker or a computer virus that's slipped through the cracks.

@Nothwind: That information is incredibly useful. Thanks for sharing it.

[Dhalin]

Definitely sounds like a wifi hijack issue.

It sucks that you're not able to get a cable to your modem; I'd seriously look into buying a cable even if it is 50+ feet just to get around issues like these. I doubt you're permitted to drill a hole in the wall if you live in an apartment, but surely there's ductwork or Something around you could use instead? Or ask the landlord if some solution could be found?

And yes, powering everything down at night is a very good idea -- there's really no reason to let all that stuff running when nobody is going to be using it. I let my DSL modem on overnight, but then I don't use it wirelessly so I know nobody is going to piggyback on it.

That and I live out in the boonies; my closest neighbor is about 200 yards away.

[Sindala]

Ok, a logical reply to this thread would be....
...What has changed in Istaria since it was Horizons? gameplay wise??
Are you trying to tell me that it always used an average of 4gb a month?? remember back when it was Horizons prob only about 2% of the planet had a broadband connection so getting upto 4gb a month was......special?

So really, what has changed to merit a usage increase that high?

[Northwind]

Sindala, it actually doesn't use an average of 4Gb per month.
3.6GB it the TOP while having 2 clients running Istaria 24/7 (without patching of course)
An usage pattern as posted by you in #9, that is 4 hours per night, means 625MB download and 108MB upload. That's really far from your suspected 4GB average per month.

[Dhalin]

Sindala, it actually doesn't use an average of 4Gb per month.
3.6GB it the TOP while having 2 clients running Istaria 24/7 (without patching of course)
An usage pattern as posted by you in #9, that is 4 hours per night, means 625MB download and 108MB upload. That's really far from your suspected 4GB average per month.

And that's assuming two clients, not just one.

~300MB per month is not that bad.

[Sindala]

Yup, but as I posted earlier in thread. I only use this laptop and wireless Dongle for Istaria and forum website and yet it still managed to use 4gb in a few weeks?