I am just curious (I have not started monitoring the usage yet) if there is a way to minimize the amount of traffic between Vera and the Internet except when it is specifically requested (when you attempt to connect from the Internet to it). An example of “excess” to me would be the YouTube video it downloads. While they have no apparently implemented it yet our ISP has announced they will be capping at 5GB. I am wondering what areas can be trimmed (plus, how many times does someone need to see that video, I do not even have sound on my computer normally).
5GB? Ouch!! That’s almost none. Let us know if your internet service is even usable with such a low cap.
It has me a bit worried. I use a beta Linux, so I am downloading updates nightly, plus I do some documentation work on the side, nevermind when I bring actual work home… I was watching my latest linux .iso download yesterday and realized each time I do that now I would burn 10% of my cap in one shot… It could be rough. They did say they were going to implement it a month ago, but so far it has been delayed.
You can uncheck ‘autoplay’ and the videos won’t play. If you have the findvera.com service there is some traffic because it does a ping every 60 seconds to be sure the network connection is alive, and to restart it if it goes down. You may want to disable the service unless you need it if you have such a low cap.
I did deselect Autoplay, but they still loaded, they just did not play. That will still burn their bandwidth.
Use Firefox with Flashblock add-on - it’ll block youtube completely unless you enable it
Actually I am. I have been blocking each video as it appears… 16 blocks put in place so far. Although I am not sure whether Adblock just prevents it from being displayed, not initially transferred. In any case, the videos are probably pretty small, it is just one more thing piece of traffic. Something to be considered because the industry is expecting more ISPs to start enabling bandwidth caps (since the first few have gotten away without too much flak, others are following).
It’s Flashblock, not Adblock
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/433
It’ll block any flash - it won’t even start, so no buffering takes place
I did deselect Autoplay, but they still loaded, they just did not play.
We’ll fix it this week:
http://bugs.micasaverde.com/view.php?id=253
325xi, thanks. I added that on for the future. Sorry, I misread what you had typed.
micasaverde, thanks also. It is quick responses and willingness to listen/work to/with customers that makes for good business in my opinion.