Hourly bandwidth usage too high - this year

HalloweenWeed · June 2015

In the past 3 months we have had problems keeping our Internet usage within our provider's bandwidth limits. We have a download limit of 17GB/mo. and have been consistently about 14.5-15GB/mo. I did some research, using bandwidth checking tools, and found that ESO was the culprit. I have checked for unwanted software taking up bandwidth, and reduced some of the extraneous desired software to reduce our download bandwidth. I have ruled out rootkits, worms, trojans, and other malicious software. We have two computers and two accounts, both me and my wife play ESO heavily, on the same Internet connection. They have no consumer upgrade for our Internet package, and we have no alternative in our location - we own a house. So we have only one alternative - reduce ESO play time or quit altogether to keep our Internet usage lower.

However, this was not a problem last September, and we were playing ESO just as much. I have seen ESO bandwidth usage at least double, perhaps much more than double, since then. I am not complaining about the patches downloads - that's understandable. I am talking about the hourly usage when online in ESO. Please consider this a complaint about the high-download volume that the game is currently doing. Please have the developers look at this and fix it, I think the current download usage of ESO is unnecessary, and caused by a bad update.

-HalloweenWeed

EDIT 6/4/15: I have new download rate information now, and I see the statistics I had were not typical (exc. for Cyrodiil PvP W/mobs). I now think the high download rate was only in Cyrodiil around big mobs of players. I posted this later:

HalloweenWeed wrote: »

Regarding my OP:
I was able to download the patch elsewhere, and have been in-game. And I have discovered that the previously mentioned usage statistics were not typical for me. Lately they have been around 4-12MB/hr, and the Master Merchant mod doesn't seem to have a significant impact on it. Changing toons seems to take more, and since I have 8 toons, use them as mules, and get hireling mails from them daily, that's when the download amount also soars! Previously, when I did the investigation, I was PvPing in Cyrodiil, taking keeps with big mobs, and defending keeps with big mobs. I think this made a big difference. But I don't plan on trying it (in Cyrodiil) again any time soon to verify the bandwidth issue. It was only a temporary game strategy, I'm back in PvE in single alliance map lands now. We have decided to download all patches >1GB offsite in the future to alleviate our bandwidth problems. FYI.

Gidorick · June 2015

I'm constantly over my limit. ESO and Netflix are to blame.

Armitas · June 2015

It's these patches. This tiny little patch today was 2.6GB.

HalloweenWeed · June 2015

out --> our
"They have no consumer upgrade for our Internet package, and we have no alternative in our location - we own a house."
(Edits are not allowed)

leibnizlq · June 2015

does anyone know how to download the patchdata like depot_91to92.z01 whithout the game client in this website http://live.patcher.elderscrollsonline.com:80 ? If I can download this updata pack alone,then I could use download software to accelerate the speed of download.

HalloweenWeed · June 2015

Please, this thread is NOT about patch download size.

traigusb14_ESO2 · June 2015

Do you know exactly when it changed?

You say it wasn't that bad in Sept., but was that when it actually changed? I'm trying to think of patch items that may have caused the issue.

May be unannounced bot tracking or even bug tracking stuff running in background.

ThePonzzz · June 2015

HalloweenWeed wrote: »

Please, this thread is NOT about patch download size.

Outside patches and fresh downloads, ESO should not be taking too much bandwidth. Are you sure you're seeing the numbers right? Most everything is client side. I just checked, and I'm seeing numbers like 20kb per minute or about 1.2MB per hour. But this was all by myself with nothing really going on.

Observant · June 2015

HalloweenWeed wrote: »

Please, this thread is NOT about patch download size.

It's about ESO taking up too much bandwidth - and merely running the game will not do that to you. So we move onto what's related to ESO and using related processes.

Even a small patch with no new material such as today's will run you for nearly 3GB (wtf Zeni?) which is nearly 18% of your monthly limit.

Moonshadow66 · June 2015

I never know how much it needs on my end, we don't have a limit here in Germany (I had 2 ISPs, with both it's been like this). But the power company wanted a lot more money per month after a year playing ESO..

BigM · June 2015

Wow so when we get imp city you will be way over limit. I wonder if the way Blizzard does it helps? They dl a little at a time few days before patches so you don't get it all at once. It also could be a bug in the megaserver.

Chikenuget · June 2015

Observant wrote: »

HalloweenWeed wrote: »

Please, this thread is NOT about patch download size.

It's about ESO taking up too much bandwidth - and merely running the game will not do that to you. So we move onto what's related to ESO and using related processes.

Even a small patch with no new material such as today's will run you for nearly 3GB (wtf Zeni?) which is nearly 18% of your monthly limit.

Yeah seriously, I'm not even going to bother patching right now. Just going to continue playing Witcher 3.

HalloweenWeed · June 2015

traigusb14_ESO2 wrote: »

Do you know exactly when it changed?

You say it wasn't that bad in Sept., but was that when it actually changed? I'm trying to think of patch items that may have caused the issue.

May be unannounced bot tracking or even bug tracking stuff running in background.

We took a 6mo. hiatus in mid-October so no, I don't know exactly. We returned in late March, after patch 2.

Our Internet usage was already somewhat high at that point, due to the patch downloads. I expected our usage to go down, but it did not. I waited a month to let the patch downloads expire from our monthly usage record, that was in early May.
So in early May I began using network monitoring tools to see which nodes were using the bandwidth. It was late May before I was sure it was our gaming computers, and then I started using application bandwidth monitoring tools.

I did not determine the usage rate of ESO until a couple of weeks ago. It does vary. But I am seeing about 40-80MB for a typical 4hr. session, or a rough average about 15MB/hr. - not including the launcher which is typically 1-2.x MB. The monitoring software does not compile history (free version), and when we close ESO it resets the download statistics for it. And since we want to conserve electricity and keep the heat in the room minimal (we have high-end gaming computers), we close ESO when we aren't using it. Then recently I installed the same monitoring software on my wife's computer, and am seeing similar numbers on hers as well.

Currently I am playing about 10hrs/day, 7d/week, and my wife is playing about 31hrs/wk, but she just had a vacation week and played nearly as much as I do last week. Anyway, that was around 2GB used last week, not including updates (there was none last week), and not including the launcher nor other Internet uses. When you include 2GB for updates each week, and 2-4GB each month for other things, you see where the usage can get excessive. We don't download video of any kind, it takes too much of our limit.

In our typical week our ESO usage amounts to about 1.5GB + updates. If we have 2.x GB updates, 4x/mo., that's about 15GB (yes there are more than 4 weeks in an average month), and that's too much for us, it leaves us very little for other uses.

I just had to stop the ESO download, with at least 938MB to go, because according to my calculations we don't have quite enough download limit left to finish it - and then we still couldn't use ESO because we have no "hourly" bandwidth left for it. Hopefully we will have enough expired bandwidth by the end of the week to allow us to continue. Thank you for your inquiry into this issue.

EDIT 6/4/15: I have new download rate information now, and I see the above statistics were not typical (exc. for Cyrodiil PvP W/mobs). I posted this later:

HalloweenWeed wrote: »

Regarding my OP:
I was able to download the patch elsewhere, and have been in-game. And I have discovered that the previously mentioned usage statistics were not typical for me. Lately they have been around 5MB/hr, and the Master Merchant mod doesn't seem to have a significant impact on it. Previously, when I did the investigation, I was PvPing in Cyrodiil, taking keeps with big mobs, and defending keeps with big mobs. I think this made a big difference. But I don't plan on trying it (in Cyrodiil) again any time soon to verify the bandwidth issue. It was only a temporary game strategy, I'm back in PvE in single alliance map lands now. We have decided to download all patches >1GB offsite in the future to alleviate our bandwidth problems. FYI.

DaveMoeDee · June 2015

Every Monday, bring computer to a Starbucks.

One of many reasons to appreciate city life. Comcast decided to suspend enforcement of their 250 GB threshold. I won't give them money for cable, but I haven't had issues with their Internet service.

gard · June 2015

I feel your pain. Where I live, the only internet I can get at the moment is 4G wireless. It's hideously expensive.
The only reason I can play (read: keep up with the patches) is that I download the patches while I'm at work.

What are you using to monitor usage?

I will monitor my ESO related bandwidth tonight and let you know what my rate/hour is.

Ojustaboo · June 2015

You could patch one PC and copy files to the other to save you a bit

HalloweenWeed · June 2015

Hey, could mods do this to me? I use the following mods:

Lootdrop, Continued
Lorebooks
Master Merchant
RAETIA InfoHub
Shissu's Guild Tools
FCO Chat Tab Brain
Awesome guild store
LibAddonMenu (some mod needed this to update it's libraries)

My wife uses:

Chat master 9000
HarvestMap (EsoHeadMarkers)
Lootdrop, Continued
Lorebooks
Master Merchant
Shissu's LUA memory
SkyShards
Undiscovered

We both use Minion mod manager, we don't let it run automatically, we only run it once a week or less. It is not running when we run ESO.

The one that I am most concerned about is Master Merchant, since it keeps tabs on all guild store purchases, all players. We added that one in late April. It's really too bad if that one is the culprit, since it does us a great deal of good in-game financially speaking. The problem is it would really be quite inconvenient to disable it for a week to find out, but I suppose with my monitoring software I can find out in a matter of hours - the problem being that now it may be a week or more before we get enough bandwidth back to find out.

Samadhi · June 2015

20 gigs monthly bandwidth here, have been tracking my net usage for the past 8-10 months.

The issue is not playing ESO, which I can do 10-12 hours daily for a month straight without issues.

The issue is patch size -- my net tool lets me observe day-by-day and patch days are consistently the days where the tally gets too high.

Have also run comparative tests:
A day using only ESO with no one else home for the weekend has less traffic than a day not using ESO at all but accessing things like Youtube and Facebook. This is especially true when multiple people are home all using the internet.
Talked to my ISP about it and they backed up my presupposition -- the most common sources of bandwidth overage are youtube, netflix and game patches or Steam downloads.

HeroOfNone · June 2015

Doh, posted too late to see the reply on minion.

I would try to go addon free and Uninstaller minion for a month, or even a week, and see what results you have. ESOhead addons I believe update externally and other addons could be updating constantly as well

DaveMoeDee · June 2015

Samadhi wrote: »

20 gigs monthly bandwidth here, have been tracking my net usage for the past 6 months.

The issue is not playing ESO, which I can do 10-12 hours daily for a month straight without issues.

The issue is patch size -- my net tool lets me observe day-by-day and patch days are consistently the days where the tally gets too high.

Have also run comparative tests:
A day using only ESO with no one else home for the weekend has less traffic than a day not using ESO at all but accessing things like Youtube and Facebook. This is especially true when multiple people are home all using the internet.
Talked to my ISP about it and they backed up my presupposition -- the most common sources of bandwidth overage are youtube, netflix and game patches or Steam downloads.

Is Steam an option with such a low monthly bandwidth? Modern single player RPGs are larger than that. Was your initial ESO install from disk?

Tiveria · June 2015

Just curios what happens when you hit the limit they turn your internet off? Ive never had any limits so why Im asking

HalloweenWeed · June 2015

DaveMoeDee wrote: »

Every Monday, bring computer to a Starbucks.

Our computers are big, and weigh about 20 lbs. each (mine is water-cooled). Plus our only monitors are 24". Not feasible. But we do have an alternate method of downloading, which I should've reverted to today. But since in the past the posted patch sizes have been a little more than the actual that I seen, I thought maybe we could do it. I was wrong.

We can download elsewhere, and copy the files to our computers. It is quite an inconvenience, and one of us might get into trouble for it someday - perhaps even making our employment in jeopardy. We've done this several times before.

Ojustaboo wrote: »

You could patch one PC and copy files to the other to save you a bit

Yeah we've been doing that since Beta over a year ago. We're used to the methods to reduce download bandwidth, and I am what you would call a "power user," or perhaps even a "computer geek." Please keep giving your suggestions like this though, you could help other people with suggestions like this.

gard · June 2015

Ojustaboo wrote: »

You could patch one PC and copy files to the other to save you a bit

Now this is interesting. I did something similar when I installed my son's copy. Transferred the game directory to his computer and then ran the installer.

Erock25 · June 2015

10 hours a day and 7 days a week of play time. I'm seriously starting to question my life choices when I could potentially have this instead.

HalloweenWeed · June 2015

gard wrote: »

I feel your pain. Where I live, the only internet I can get at the moment is 4G wireless. It's hideously expensive.
The only reason I can play (read: keep up with the patches) is that I download the patches while I'm at work.

What are you using to monitor usage?

I will monitor my ESO related bandwidth tonight and let you know what my rate/hour is.

First I used Capsa (after one other failed to give me the necessary info) to find which network node was taking the bandwidth - we have 7 wired LAN nodes (devices) plus a few wireless. Then I used NetBalancer to show individual application bandwidth within computers. Did you see my post above RE: mods? I now suspect maybe MM is eating up bandwidth. I cringe to think of ESO without it. Might be better to just play less.

Samadhi · June 2015

DaveMoeDee wrote: »

Samadhi wrote: »

20 gigs monthly bandwidth here, have been tracking my net usage for the past 6 months.

The issue is not playing ESO, which I can do 10-12 hours daily for a month straight without issues.

The issue is patch size -- my net tool lets me observe day-by-day and patch days are consistently the days where the tally gets too high.

Have also run comparative tests:
A day using only ESO with no one else home for the weekend has less traffic than a day not using ESO at all but accessing things like Youtube and Facebook. This is especially true when multiple people are home all using the internet.
Talked to my ISP about it and they backed up my presupposition -- the most common sources of bandwidth overage are youtube, netflix and game patches or Steam downloads.

Is Steam an option with such a low monthly bandwidth? Modern single player RPGs are larger than that. Was your initial ESO install from disk?

Tiveria wrote: »

Just curios what happens when you hit the limit they turn your internet off? Ive never had any limits so why Im asking

The net keeps running, but every gig over is 3.33$ extra.
Price gouging in rural areas at its finest.

Recently found another net option that will provide us with 75 gigs per month with only 2.50$ on each give over. Making the swap next month.

Erock25 wrote: »

10 hours a day and 7 days a week of play time. I'm seriously starting to question my life choices when I could potentially have this instead.

Been out of work on disability for the past three years. My girlfriend works, but I am home 99% of the time with often little to nothing I can do but make use of the computer.
It is an escape more than anything; and, if I could have my life back from 7 years ago when I was working 40 hours a week, taking 5 classes per week and had no time to game, I would in a heart beat.

$infraction2008b16_ESO$ · June 2015

It's patches, without patches you're looking at around 100-200 mb a day which is normal for an MMO.

RinaldoGandolphi · June 2015

Erock25 wrote: »

10 hours a day and 7 days a week of play time. I'm seriously starting to question my life choices when I could potentially have this instead.

HalloweenWeed · June 2015

Tiveria wrote: »

Just curios what happens when you hit the limit they turn your internet off? Ive never had any limits so why Im asking

They throttle it down to 4KB/sec. or less, which is near old-fashioned regular phone line dial-up speed. It often takes about 5 minutes to load some individual web pages (like weather.com, which I recently stopped using to conserve download) when that happens.

ThePonzzz · June 2015

Wow, 70 hours a week is a lot. Your add-ons that check on data every 30 to 120 seconds (Like Master Merchant) are going to eat up a lot more resources, but it shouldn't be adding a lot to bandwidth. I've only approached 10MB/h in large grouping situations. Solo content I barely climb over 2MB/h though. Not sure what to tell you. Only having 17GB a month is pretty bananas. My household uses over 200GB a month, and that's just 2 of us.

HalloweenWeed · June 2015

RinaldoGandolphi wrote: »

Erock25 wrote: »

10 hours a day and 7 days a week of play time. I'm seriously starting to question my life choices when I could potentially have this instead.

I'm currently unemployed, an affliction that is currently effecting 5.5% of Americans. Not by choice. It is harder to keep/get a job when you are over 50. And I am working hard on remedying that, so any day now I could be reducing my play time drastically - or not (cringe). Our finances are not sustainable like this, if I don't get a job within a few months I shudder to think of the consequences - the game helps me refrain from such thoughts. There is so much competition out there right now in my area, and my competencies, job-wise, it's really tough.