On Mon, Nov 03, 2008 at 10:22:44AM +0100, Patryk Zawadzki wrote: > On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 2:58 AM, Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com> wrote: > > On Mon, 2008-11-03 at 00:06 +0100, thibaut bethune wrote: > >> Some softwares requires to know what is the user connection speed to > >> deliver the best experience. > >> For instance, Totem has a YouTube plugin that allows the user to > > You'd need other pieces of code that would test-download from the > > content server to quickly determine the speed, and you'd also need to > While this is true I think we should add a place somewhere to specify > such information (ideally in NM as it varies between connections) so > > Please specify the speed: [ Try to detect automatically | ↓ ]. > [x] I am charged for using this connection so try to minimize the > background traffic." I vaguely recall a story about a consumer device (wifi AP or similar) that'd phone home for an ntp update everytime it started. The result was that A LOT of bandwidth was used, and someone got angry about it and wrote an article with lots of keen insights and pretty traffic graphs [maybe he got the ip address reallocated to him or something?]. Summary: don't do that. If anyone knows what I'm talking about, please link to that article, I wanna read it again. And have all the arguments I can't give a reference to in mind the next time someone wants n-m to detect whether it's on an internets! ;) The point? What seems innocent can become a nightmare when enough people do it. "Yeah, but it's just a one-time download of a meg or two". What if people are very mobile and visit a lot of networks? Who are we going to dowload from to test the bandwidth? They'll have a bigger bandwidth bill to foot. Sustaining a download for enough time that your ISP starts dropping your traffic and you can confidently say something about your bandwidth is going to take more than a few packets. If a few packets for an ntp update can cause problems, I'd wouldn't _a_priori_ assume that this can't. It remains to be seen whether it's a problem, but I wouldn't want to find out by trying it. "hey, will fireworks blow my hand off? ..." ;) always-predicting-sky-falling-down'ly yours, -- Jonas Kölker <jonaskoelker gnu org> <URL:http://jonaskoelker.ignorelist.com>
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