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Why is Spotify chugging upload bandwidth when it is not streaming?

community.spotify.com

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Re: Why is Spotify chugging upload bandwidth when it is not streaming?

#121

Post by ohazi »

csense wrote: post #100
mcculley wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The P2P app could make itself more trustworthy. On OS X, it could opt into the App Sandbox such that it could not read files unrelated to what it has downloaded. If you run fs_usage against Spotify on OS X, you will see that it is reading files in other places than where it downloads to.

Isn't it the norm on UNIX-like OS'es for things to use tons of dynamic libraries and spew pieces of themselves all over different directories?

Native OS X apps either statically link everything, or shove all of their dynamic libs into a single .app package... that's why their binaries are so big. This avoids shared lib versioning nightmares and makes everything "just work" (including drag-and-drop installs), but it also means you have 30 bajillion copies of libXYZ on your disk.

Re: Why is Spotify chugging upload bandwidth when it is not streaming?

#122

Post by endianswap »

hammock wrote: post #104
nthj wrote: post #47

I commonly stream Spotify on my MacBook while tethering via my iPhone at coffee shops. Little did I know I was paying $10/GB to let others listen to music. Thanks, Spotify, thanks.

If you listen off of the mobile app, it's not p2p. I would recommend that if your phone is right next to your computer

He said he's running Spotify on his MacBook, it's just tethered to a mobile phone.

Re: Why is Spotify chugging upload bandwidth when it is not streaming?

#123

Post by rgo »

Didn't know Spotify ran a p2p rig. Just wish they would give me some extra free minutes for having the damn thing up and running all the time back home...

Anyway, quite entertaining to monitor its port traffic on my Mac:

   perl -e'while(1){%x=map{$_=>$x{$_}+1}grep/spotify/i,`lsof -i -P`;print for grep{$x{$_}
It seems to target peers geographically, which makes sense.

Re: Why is Spotify chugging upload bandwidth when it is not streaming?

#124

Post by diminoten »

freehunter wrote: post #119
diminoten wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don't see Spotify as a business risk unless the bandwidth itself is a cost. It almost sounds like someone just wants to make a decision and is post-hoc justifying that decision with this "security concern!" fearmongering.

I posted this elsewhere, but... P2P applications have security risks associated with them, but they also have network constraints associated with them. It doesn't take many P2P users to choke legitimate users out of a network. When some of the network monitoring tools we use are licensed based on how much data is flowing through the network, P2P gets expensive real quick. Move that stuff to a network we're not monito…

I don't think P2P applications have a significant security risk.

Specifically, I don't think the security industry at large considers P2P to be inherently risky. If you trust Spotify like you trust say, Google Chrome, or Microsoft Outlook, or any of the other apps you run on your machine, the fact that one or more of them uses P2P in no way further raises your risk profile.

Re: Why is Spotify chugging upload bandwidth when it is not streaming?

#125

Post by bashinator »

Falling3 wrote: post #85
redblacktree wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point. You can go to jail for that; it makes you a felon.

Violating terms of service is not a felony. In fact, it's not even a crime; it's a civil matter.

Tell that to Aaron Swartz.

Re: Why is Spotify chugging upload bandwidth when it is not streaming?

#126

Post by freehunter »

diminoten wrote: post #124
freehunter wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I posted this elsewhere, but... P2P applications have security risks associated with them, but they also have network constraints associated with them. It doesn't take many P2P users to choke legitimate users out of a network. When some of the network monitoring tools we use are licensed based on how much data is flowing through the network, P2P gets expensive real quick. Move that stuff to a network we're not monito…

I don't think P2P applications have a significant security risk. Specifically, I don't think the security industry at large considers P2P to be inherently risky. If you trust Spotify like you trust say, Google Chrome, or Microsoft Outlook, or any of the other apps you run on your machine, the fact that one or more of them uses P2P in no way further raises your risk profile.

The only security risk it needs to be is to blind us from other security risks. That can be accomplished by its behavior in the network monitoring tool (many malware applications behave very similarly in a p2p fashion) or by putting us at risk of running over the amount of traffic we're licensed for in any of our tools. We're not in the business of buying licenses to support a program we explicitly disallow, so instead we're in the business of explicitly disallowing software that would put us over that license. P2P raises our risk level just by being noisy. iTunes does the same thing, and it's not P2P. It's just really, really chatty and it is also disallowed by policy. Chrome and Outlook don't put us in danger of being over our license or out of bandwidth.

Users don't understand. I get it. Information security is a young industry, and some decisions that are made might not be immediately clear. It's a negative job; if you're doing everything exactly right, users will be complaining that you're getting in their way and the bosses will be wondering why you even have a budget. If you're not doing everything exactly right, users will be complaining that they have odd charges on their credit cards and the bosses are wondering why they can't log into their email anymore.

You might not like my driving, but covering my eyes with your hands doesn't solve that problem. P2P blinds my network monitors just like your hands blind my eyes.

Re: Why is Spotify chugging upload bandwidth when it is not streaming?

#127

Post by allbutlost »

sahaskatta wrote: post #113

The Android app is horrendous for this issue as well. I have a Nexus 4 with the latest Android OS and the latest version of Spotify. I have yet to use the app even once this month. (I use Google Music.) The Spotify Android app has consumed almost 250 MB of data on WiFi and about another 100 MB on 3G/4G this month alone. Does anyone else have this issue? (For anyone that doesn't know, Android provides the data usage o…

The android client doesn't use p2p.

Re: Why is Spotify chugging upload bandwidth when it is not streaming?

#129

Post by thomas-st »

My main problem with this is that Spotify utilizes the full upstream bandwidth, causing the latency to go up dramatically on connections where the upstream is limited. If they were just a little bit intelligent and limited the streaming to 90% of the available bandwidth I'd be okay with it since that wouldn't affect the latency.

Question: What is the best way to traffic shape all upstream connections on OS X? I've tried ipfw but I can't figure out a good way to e.g. limit the upload on all apps except for e.g. SSH.

Re: Why is Spotify chugging upload bandwidth when it is not streaming?

#130

Post by Falling3 »

bashinator wrote: post #125
Falling3 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Violating terms of service is not a felony. In fact, it's not even a crime; it's a civil matter.

Tell that to Aaron Swartz.

Aaron Swartz was charged with fraud and unathorized. Not breaking TOS. The idea that breaking TOS could constitute a crime has been shot down by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. http://thefire.org/article/14389.html
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