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How much network traffic does Live Mesh generate as it looks for things to sync? RRS feed

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    Having fielded some projects at sites where network bandwidth is closely monitored, I'm curious as to how much network "chatter" Live Mesh generates while it looks for things to synchronize. I can understand that there will be usage when data is moved around, but what's the "background noise" like?
    Wednesday, April 30, 2008 9:09 PM

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    Hi GuyWithDogs,

    We use a notification scheme by which the cloud tells clients when things have changed.  In the steady state, that means we have an HTTP request about every 25 seconds, regardless of the number of core objects you have. Of course, if things are changing (people adding files, etc.) we also do additional work to synchronize that data.

    Thanks,

    Ben.

    Wednesday, April 30, 2008 10:44 PM

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    Hi GuyWithDogs,

    We use a notification scheme by which the cloud tells clients when things have changed.  In the steady state, that means we have an HTTP request about every 25 seconds, regardless of the number of core objects you have. Of course, if things are changing (people adding files, etc.) we also do additional work to synchronize that data.

    Thanks,

    Ben.

    Wednesday, April 30, 2008 10:44 PM
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    Ben - Live Mesh said:

    Hi GuyWithDogs,

    We use a notification scheme by which the cloud tells clients when things have changed.  In the steady state, that means we have an HTTP request about every 25 seconds, regardless of the number of core objects you have. Of course, if things are changing (people adding files, etc.) we also do additional work to synchronize that data.

    Thanks,

    Ben.



    Hi Ben.  I am confused by this.  If the client has connection open and just waits for a reply, why would poll every 25 seconds?  Why not just wait for the reply (i.e. Push notify).  I would think client could open 1 socket, make 1 request, and wait for any replies and process them as needed and loop on another request.
    Friday, May 2, 2008 10:08 PM
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    WilliamStacey said:

    Hi Ben.  I am confused by this.  If the client has connection open and just waits for a reply, why would poll every 25 seconds?  Why not just wait for the reply (i.e. Push notify).  I would think client could open 1 socket, make 1 request, and wait for any replies and process them as needed and loop on another request.



    It seems easier to just respond to requests than to have to manage the connection list (and potential timeouts/disconnects from really transient devices), I think. This approach may make it easier to deal with firewalls and such, too. The frequency seems high to me. I'm hoping that there's not a lot of data on each request.

    We had a system that polled a web service every 30 seconds, and transferred less than 200 bytes each time. That went into a financial institution and they made us slow the polling rate down so that we didn't interfere with their other "real" network traffic. That's partly my interest in how the connections are updated - but it's more of a business scenario, and not a consumer scenario (which seems to be what Live Mesh is focusing on right now).
    Friday, May 2, 2008 10:18 PM
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    It isn't an issue for me at the office, since the Live Mesh client won't work with our proxy server, but any client that wants Internet access avery 25 seconds is pretty excessive for those that look for traffic higs on the network. Someone mentioned to me recently that some people have Vista gadgets that are generating a ton of request through our proxy servers and all these attempts are being logged. When the report shows someone hitting the same IP all day every day, that report tends to freak some people out.
    -steve
    Microsoft MVP Windows Live / Windows Live OneCare Forum Moderator
    Monday, May 5, 2008 6:26 PM
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    Hi,
     
    Thanks, all of you, for the feedback and discussion here.  We currently have a bug that limits the amount of time we can park an HTTP request, which explains the 25 seconds, and we're working on this.  But we're also working on improving overall efficiency, so this is something that will definitely improve moving forward.

    Thanks again,

    Ben.
    Monday, May 5, 2008 8:37 PM
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    I have been using LiveMesh to synchronize between my home system and my work system for a few weeks.  I think this is a great product with great potential.  One thing that I have noticed is that MOE.EXE is eating up about 1% of my wireless bandwitdh, constantly.  Is there an explanation for this?  This seems excessive to me.  Especially as this happens even though there is absolutely no activity whatsoever on the synchronized folders.  

    I am running Windows 7 on both systems.  

    Thanks,

    Jim
    Monday, December 7, 2009 7:31 PM
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    I'm not sure how you are measuring that 1% usage, but suspect that it is a fractional part of that. Live Mesh needs to be signed in, so therefore it will be checking with the servers for changes to the Mesh. If you want all activity to cease, I suspect that signing out of the client is the way to go - work off-line, as it were.
    -steve
    ~ Microsoft MVP Windows Live ~ Windows Live OneCare| Live Mesh|MS Security Essentials Forums Moderator ~
    Monday, December 7, 2009 8:28 PM
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    I think signing out is not a good answer.  I was looking for something that would fit seemlessly into my environment.  I measured the 1% on my task manager / Wireless Network Connection histogram.  I also ran perfmon and can see that moe.exe is indeed taking up a lot of traffic even when it is not synchronizing.  I am going to run it again for a few days this weekend to see how it goes.  I really like this product and hope that it will work out for me.
    Saturday, December 12, 2009 3:40 PM
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    I have the same network waste like Digital Smartworks reported, and it's an issue that makes me want to go back to Dropbox with more then 100times less network waste (literally). According to MS Ressource monitor, Moe.exe polls at 10kb/s every 25 seconds on a regular base, using an permanent overall average of 50 to 100b/s sending(!!!) and around 30-50 b/s reading. Compare to dropbox: avarage of 5b/s sending and reading. But, occassionately there are other polls from Moe.exe, even though there is nothing happening in the mesh. After 2 minutes of monitoring I got an average waste of 370b/s with peaks up to 750b/s writings !! This really is excessive and means I cannot run live mesh on any system that relies on fast internet reaction, like a home pc used for online gaming. But that ruins the whole idea behind live mesh.

    The reading polls would be ok, even though they still are 10 times higher the dropbox. But on asynchronous DSL, the writing is way too high, permanently wasting 1% to 1.5% of the upload bandwich, going up to 6%, of a standard 1K DSL, and yes, this still is standard. My connection is a 768DSL and I was very happy to get one on the country (Had ISDN before).

    I really like Live Mesh and hope they will fix this issue on the next step of merging it into the live package.

    Friday, April 30, 2010 7:56 AM
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    Thanks for your feedback, A.Jones.

    -steve

    ~ Microsoft MVP Windows Live ~ Windows Live OneCare| Live Mesh|MS Security Essentials Forums Moderator ~
    Friday, April 30, 2010 11:21 AM
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