Block Carbonite



  • My dad refuses to understand that we don't have infinite bandwidth. This month's problem is that he installed Carbonite's free backup thing, told it to back up literally everything on his computer, including system and temporary files, and all 500 copies of each photo he has ever had on a digital camera memory card, and several layers of "old C drive" that he keeps in various places on his computer, and left it to run 24/7 as long as his laptop has access to an internet connection.

    I can't convince him to not do that, and I think it would save a lot of trouble in the long run if I blocked Carbonite at the router level, rather than complaining every time he turns it back on and completely uses up the house's bandwidth. If he wants to fuck up his internet connection at his office, that's fine with me.

    How can I block Carbonite from my house? I found this thread on another forum, but they don't seem to have reached an answer better than "figure out all the IP addresses they use and block each one individually".


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    Well, hazarding into these murky waters, you have access to DHCP, right? You know how to run a DNS server? DHCP sets your DNS server as the one for the house, log all the things and after a day or two you know what requests have been made. Then just change the various DNS entries to 127.0.0.1 and let his computer go apeshit.



  • I wonder if I can get a UVerse router to tell me what's in its DNS cache.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    Maybe, but serious nerds run their own DNS. Do you want to be kicked out of our club?



  • After a bit of searching, I don't think my router has options to disable DHCP or change the default DNS server.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    You have to be shitting me?

    Of course, I believe UVerse runs their TV feed over the internet connection? I guess it would make sense in a way, to help reduce possibilities for support requests.

    You cannot change DHCP in any way?


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    What about his Hosts file?

    Wont that fuck with Carbonite's support when they figure that one out??

    I believe you can set Carbonite to back up during a certain window. Can you set it for a time when you won't be online?


    Filed under: Yeah right, you are always online



  • @Polygeekery said:

    Yeah right, you are always online

    Basically this.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @ben_lubar said:

    and all 500 copies of each photo he has ever had on a digital camera memory card, and several layers of "old C drive" that he keeps in various places on his computer

    Why don't you start deduplicating that shit for him? It's probably a more useful thing to do than Go.



  • My setup is a regular NetGear router that everything connects to, and the NetGear router then connects to the AT&T modem. The NetGear router is far more configurable and, unlike the modem, it doesn't reset itself every 2 hours for no reason even after being replaced.

    If you can, try to rename the modem network to something else and name the router network to what the modem used to be and give it the same password. Then just move over the physical plugs and hey prestoh, you have a man in the middle.



  • The router is in my dad's bedroom, so I think he'd notice if I put another router in there.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    Tell him it makes the internet faster. From what you have told us, you could hook a blender to the router and he would probably believe you.



  • How the fuck is it 2015 and network connections still don't just work? Why can't I run my Carbonite traffic on low priority 24/7 without disturbing your YouTube and WTDWTF experience? :angry:



  • Time to move out of the house? :-)



  • Apart from agreeing with cartman, you have the problem that he's been sold a magic condom that will prevent accidents to his computer.

    You can buy him a mybook that has like 2tb space and auto syncs, which may make him comfortable enough to turn it off, or you can configure Carbonite to only back up non system files, and show him how to make a repair disc or reinstall windows, then restore his backups.

    Blocking Carbonite is not an appropriate response, because not only did he pay for that application, he's also backing things up for a reason, even if you don't think it's a good reason. If something does happen and he tries to restore, but you have /Dev/null his data, he will be mad (rightfully so) that you've potentially ducked him really badly.

    Explain that Carbonite is an install on top of windows, so he doesn't need to back windows up, he'll have already had to recover it for that to work.

    If Carbonite supports two backups, make one full system restore, and then non system files, teach him about incremental backups.



  • Yeah, when backing a large amount of data to a cloud service it's good to do it in tiers. First you add the important documents, then slightly less important documents, then the various stuff... Crashplan can be configured with priorities like that so other programs probably can too. Does Carbonite not support a network speed limit? Then you'd be all set.

    Or leave the computer on 24/7 in the fastest internet connection you can get until the initial backup is finished... assuming that takes less than a few days.



  • Ben has basically dial up, but the point remains it's not his Internet or computer, so it's not his call. He can educate better practices though.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Matches said:

    He can educate better practices though.

    Qft.



  • @Matches said:

    Ben has basically dial up

    Yeah, I don't think there's any way to make the initial run of a cloud backup work over that.

    You could set the speed limit slow enough that the other internet stuff still works, but then it will take months to complete.

    Ship the laptop to a friend with a 100Mbps connection, do it there, ship it back.



  • @anonymous234 said:

    Why can't I run my Carbonite traffic on low priority 24/7 without disturbing your YouTube and WTDWTF experience?

    Windows has BITS for exactly this purpose, but BITS isn't magic-- it can't see who else in the household is trying to use the router.

    And a lot of application developers are too stupid to use it, that's another problem. Steam, for example, has like 47 widgets and probably thousands of lines of code that would be made completely redundant if any of the retard interns working on the client had heard of "BITS".



  • I talked to Ben L about this over Steam yesterday, and I think the real problem is he hates just talking to his dad about stuff. Because his problems are all easily solvable.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @blakeyrat said:

    Because his problems are all easily solvable.

    So Ben prefers his dad to have more difficult problems?



  • Didn't steam's updater exist before BITS though? (And if not, something something, linux/mac compatibility something something)



  • @Matches said:

    Didn't steam's updater exist before BITS though? (And if not, something something, linux/mac compatibility something something)

    Possibly. Probably not-- I'm pretty sure BITS was in Windows 2000.

    What's your point, assuming you had one?


  • Considered Harmful

    Something along the lines of "Why the fuck should a cross platform app use Window's specific API", to which you'll bleat "That's the supported way" etc fuckit and then when they say "well, contortions to the app code for this?" they're pretty much set up. Probably they should use BITS for this, but, who the fuck knows not my codebase and dunno how much of a POS BITS is.

    Is my guess at the point, god you're such an asshat.

    Also Steam is tiny, so doubt there's 47 interns to be had.



  • Ok well since you know exactly what I'm going to say...

    Yes I don't believe Windows users should have to suffer because Steam also runs on OSes with fewer features.

    I also believe the above sentence is common sense and extraordinarily obvious. Also why concepts like Java desktop apps were a failure from day one.


  • Considered Harmful

    Conceded - it is indeed likely true that Windows is too much of a special snowflake, and will always be so.



  • It's not that Windows is "special", it's that it does X better and therefore if you want your software to do X, you should switch to the OS' method of doing that. If OS X had some amazing new data compression method Windows didn't, then Steam should switch to that, too.

    It's not about "special snowflakes", it's about "making your software as good as possible".

    And yes, that should be the goal.


  • Considered Harmful

    @blakeyrat said:

    "making your software as good as possible".

    Windows does not, by the large, consider interoperability a major good, POSIX/UNIX always has. So this is why, Special Snowflake Windows loses.



  • @Gribnit said:

    Windows does not, by the large, consider interoperability a major good, POSIX/UNIX always has. So this is why, Special Snowflake Windows loses.

    I don't think interoperability should mean "use the least common denominator of all technologies available". If POSIX has an equivalent mechanism for doing whatever BITS does, then the program should use that in a POSIX environment and use BITS in a windows environment. If POSIX doesn't, then it should have more limited functionality in that environment and use BITS in Windows.

    "But that means more work and actually knowing what my platform can do!" Yes. I mean, consider what your complaint is. That Windows can do something that apparently OS X and Linux can't, so Windows is the problem. :wtf:

    Also, it isn't the platform that loses, it's the users. Try putting the users ahead of your platform preferences.


  • Considered Harmful

    Good context mix, I can dance to it...

    Go ahead and use BITS if you need what it does on Windows - but then oh crud! If that's core we need it anyway! Like Steam needed background downloading. So they implemented it - and then, they had had to roll their own, so why have to maintain both approaches? Also, look up Gabe Newell, and see if you think he would really want to dance to a Microsoft tune for anything.

    So they decided in Steam, I suppose, to go with their handrolled - which appears to be yeah, putting the users first, cos, fewer paths to maintain.



  • @Kian said:

    Windows can do something that apparently OS X and Linux can't

    I'll take Turing machines for 500, Alex.



  • @Gribnit said:

    So they decided in Steam, I suppose, to go with their handrolled - which appears to be yeah, putting the users first, cos, fewer paths to maintain.

    So OS providers should not try to provide new interfaces for common tasks as the need to do this appears, developers should all reimplement every little thing? How exactly does progress happen in this model? All OS makers get together and hash out common approaches for every little thing?



  • I take it you've never heard of libraries?



  • This has nothing to do with the computer's capabilities, but with ease of development. Windows can provide an easy way of accomplishing a particular task (apparently, no one has said BITS was bad so far). Linux and OS X can't and require that you roll your own.



  • I have. So OS makers should just wait for library writers to extend their systems? Or spend developer output enhancing the platforms of competitors?



  • @Kian said:

    BITS

    I still have no idea what it is. Just a sec.

    Googles

    I see a few programs specifically named after BITS, two video games I haven't played, and a few things I haven't ever heard of before. No wonder I've never heard of this thing before.

    Why should Valve implement a whole separate branch of the Steam HTTP client that only works on one operating system when the current downloader works fine and has more optional configuration settings and doesn't require separate servers for Windows than for other operating systems?


  • Considered Harmful

    Wot? They don't make them part of the fucking OS cos they don't belong there...



  • @Kian said:

    So OS providers should not try to provide new interfaces for common tasks as the need to do this appears, developers should all reimplement every little thing? How exactly does progress happen in this model? All OS makers get together and hash out common approaches for every little thing?

    Oh, so it's like the OpenGL development process, and why DirectX completely spanked their ass for about 20 years.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    why DirectX completely spanked their ass

    Wow, that must be why everyone's moving to OpenGL on Windows.



  • @ben_lubar said:

    Why should Valve implement a whole separate branch of the Steam HTTP client that only works on one operating system when the current downloader works fine and has more optional configuration settings

    None of those optional configuration settings replicate performance of BITS, nor can they since Steam has no visibility into what applications other than itself are using the network connection for.

    @ben_lubar said:

    and doesn't require separate servers for Windows than for other operating systems?

    BITS doesn't require separate servers, it just requires a resume-able FTP or HTTP server which Valve certainly already has.



  • @ben_lubar said:

    Wow, that must be why everyone's moving to OpenGL on Windows.

    OpenGL finally figured it the fuck out. And got a huge boost from being the only 3D graphics library with reasonable popularity able to be embedded in mobile devices.

    OpenGL's standard process is still complete shit.

    Don't confuse popular for good.



  • @ben_lubar said:

    I take it you've never heard of libraries?

    BITS requires visibility into the networking layer of the entire OS, or else it couldn't possibly work. There's nothing Valve could put in Steam's memory-space to provide that.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    None of those optional configuration settings replicate performance of BITS, nor can they since Steam has no visibility into what applications other than itself are using the network connection for.

    As the only programs I've ever heard of that use it are games, and even then only during times when the player isn't doing anything, I don't think Valve switching to BITS would improve anything.



  • @ben_lubar said:

    As the only programs I've ever heard of that use it are games, and even then only during times when the player isn't doing anything, I don't think Valve switching to BITS would improve anything.

    Jesus fucking Christ you idiot.

    Look, the whole POINT of BITS is you initiate the transfer, then you don't have to care of the user is doing anything or not. BITS takes care of throttling/pausing your transfer if the user's doing something else on their computer.

    That applies as much to a MMORPG or a FPS game as it does to, say, Netflix starting up a stream. Or a completely different user starting up a YouTube stream. BITS just works, competently, silently.

    So when you say, "only during times when the player isn't doing anything" THAT IS THE FUCKING POINT OF USING IT! THAT IS WHAT IT'S FOR!



  • I take it Microsoft also found out a way to determine when other computers on the network are using the connection? Because I'm confused as to the reason someone would want to slow down their game download while they browse the internet.



  • @ben_lubar said:

    I take it Microsoft also found out a way to determine when other computers on the network are using the connection?

    No they did not. I stated that waaay up top.

    Stop being stupid, Ben L.

    @ben_lubar said:

    Because I'm confused as to the reason someone would want to slow down their game download while they browse the internet.

    Nobody wants to slow down their game download ever.

    But generally speaking, people prefer their computer to be responsive to the thing they're doing RIGHT NOW over the thing they've queued and expect to be finished in awhile. That's what BITS provides. That's what it's for.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    So when you say, "only during times when the player isn't doing anything" THAT IS THE FUCKING POINT OF USING IT! THAT IS WHAT IT'S FOR!

    The times in question (waiting for a patch to download and waiting for a mod to download) are both cases where the player would want the download to finish as quickly as possible because they both prevent the player from playing the game they just started up.



  • @ben_lubar said:

    The times in question (waiting for a patch to download and waiting for a mod to download) are both cases where the player would want the download to finish as quickly as possible because they both prevent the player from playing the game they just started up.

    No they aren't. They're things where the player goes, "oh a download, I guess I'll check out that new episode of Bojack Horseman on Netflix instead and come back."



  • Are you the kind of person who starts up a game client without the intent to play that game immediately?

    Does that kind of person even exist?


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