How do I stop my iPhone from destroying my bandwidth when it decides to backup?

M

Mopower

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Feb 13, 2006
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At just random times. Usually after I take pictures my iPhone decides to backup to iCloud. Using every bit of my bandwidth grinding my internet to a halt until it's done. Kinda annoying when you are watching streaming video. Is there any way to tell it to only do it at a certain time? Or do I need to set up quality of service in my router and limit the phone that way? Any advice?
 
iCloud backups only happen automatically when the iPhone is plugged in and on wifi. Are you sure you aren't talking about Photo Stream?
 
I don't want to turn it off Photo Stream. I just want it to do it at 3am instead of whenever it feels like.
 
What kind of internet connection do you have that can't handle photo stream???
 
Mopower said:
15mbps down 1mbps up. So yes when it's transferring 20 pictures it saturates a 1mbps upload for a period of time.
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Like 20 seconds for one pic... are you taking 20 pics of yourself while gaming or something? :eek: What janky router are you using that can't handle a short upload with bombing your connection?
 
ocellaris said:
Like 20 seconds for one pic... are you taking 20 pics of yourself while gaming or something? :eek: What janky router are you using that can't handle a short upload with bombing your connection?
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That's the magic of the ~15:1 bandwidth ratio; just enough upstream bandwidth to let you consume approved content and no more.
 
XenIneX said:
That's the magic of the ~15:1 bandwidth ratio; just enough upstream bandwidth to let you consume approved content and no more.
Click to expand...

This. I have a 3:0.5 ratio and if I'm uploading anything (off-site backup, website updates, etc) my download goes to near-zero... really bad when I'm trying to update WoW since it uses BitTorrent and is uploading and downloading at the same time...

Also, just FYI, it's not only backups, iPhone has this ability to snatch up all the bandwidth it wants at the cost to all other devices, I use mine with Talkatone for VoIP calling, and when I do I can forget about doing anything else on any other device on the network...

You might want to consider, if you have the spare bandwidth, to do all your iPhone data over cellular, it's slower but it doesnt clog the network at least. (though if you have a tiny dataplan that might not be an option)
 
I have 10:1 TWC and I maxing my upload doesn't affect games to a notable degree. Using a DD-WRT router with nothing special setup on it.
 
I have an Asus RT-N56U. So no it's not the router. If I upload anything my connection is usable.

If I take a bunch of pictures on my phone and plug it in at the end of the day. The phone will start uploading those pictures at some random time. It can be 5 min later or 2 hours later. I never know when it will decide to do it. Another reason I would like to know when it's going to do it is when I take a picture and I want it to show up in Photostream on my PC I never know when they will be there. Most of the time it isn't a problem. But when I take a lot of pictures it is. Then my bandwidth goes to shit and I can't even web browse while it's transferring.

Setting up QoS on the router seems to have eliminated the problem. I still don't know when the transfer will happen but at least it doesn't use as much bandwidth when it does. So thanks for the suggestion.
 
All network clients still have to send responses to the server when downloading something. So if you have 1 devices that is maxing out the upload speed, another device that is downloading will not be able to communicate to the server that they recieved the packets, thus the server will interupt the download.

This happens to me when I upload something to Youtube on my computer and Netflix drops to low quality on the AppleTV while I upload.

Its not a problem of the router being "cheap" or "crappy", its just the way the network works.
 
lol are you on a Dialup connection? (serious question)

I've been on iOS since 2007 and out of all the complaints I've seen... it's never been about it pegging a connection. Usually it the exact opposite (only pulling, say, 200KB/s download from the appstore when you have a fiber line at your disposal)

I'll have to check this out. I have photostream setup and on... but never noticed it effecting my network.
 
dr.stevil said:
I've been on iOS since 2007 and out of all the complaints I've seen... it's never been about it pegging a connection. Usually it the exact opposite (only pulling, say, 200KB/s download from the appstore when you have a fiber line at your disposal)

I'll have to check this out. I have photostream setup and on... but never noticed it effecting my network.
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I think it's some kind of new implementation in iOS6, I've used iPhones over WiFi before and not had these issues, but when I got my iPhone5, that phone *WILL* get all the bandwidth that my ISP can offer me, at the expense of everyone else on the network. dont have this problem with my ipad or my 4S (both 5.1.1) didnt have it with any of my android phones, nor even my old WindowsMobile devices, therefore my guess is apple changed something in it's network stack. If anyone has a pre-5 iphone running iOS6, I'd be curious if they're having the same issue...
 
I'm curious to see if there is a solution for this. I'm getting a iPhone soon, and my internet is already slow enough.
 
raptorxrx said:
I'm curious to see if there is a solution for this. I'm getting a iPhone soon, and my internet is already slow enough.
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Yes: you go into the iCloud menu and switch Photo Stream to off.

The OP has gone through some measure of convolution because he refuses to do that.
 
Mopower said:
I have an Asus RT-N56U. So no it's not the router.
Click to expand...

I happened by pure chance to be reading another thread here earlier today and came across this quote:

"Asus seems to have issues with Apple devices on Ralink devices (at least the 56 devices)"

When googling to find out what they meant, I found nothing really specific to your particular problem, but came across this interesting thread in which it is suggested that to work best with iOS devices, you should set specific channel numbers for both the 2.4GHz and the 5GHz bandwidths rather than using Auto.

See this page for channels you can choose, set different SSIDs for the two bands (like n56u 2.4 and n56u 5) and use WPA2-PSK with AES encryption.

The iPhone only uses 2.4GHz Wireless g. After some further reading about what channel you should pick for 2.4GHz Wireless g here:

http://www.dslreports.com/faq/14250

I am proposing the theory that the reason the iPhone is having such a big effect on your download rates is that you are using a channel that is being heavily overused or interfered with. See what happens when 2.4GHz is set to Channel 1, and if that doesn't change anything, try channel 11.

Edit: I just tried out inSSIDer (free download for the Windows version) for myself. That app made it as clear as can be that my router is using channel 6, that two other users are using channel 6, that there are three users using channel 11, and only one user on channel 1. So I'm going to set my router to use channel 1.
 
Last edited:
evilsofa said:
I happened by pure chance to be reading another thread here earlier today and came across this quote:

"Asus seems to have issues with Apple devices on Ralink devices (at least the 56 devices)"

When googling to find out what they meant, I found nothing really specific to your particular problem, but came across this interesting thread in which it is suggested that to work best with iOS devices, you should set specific channel numbers for both the 2.4GHz and the 5GHz bandwidths rather than using Auto.

See this page for channels you can choose, set different SSIDs for the two bands (like n56u 2.4 and n56u 5) and use WPA2-PSK with AES encryption.

The iPhone only uses 2.4GHz Wireless g. After some further reading about what channel you should pick for 2.4GHz Wireless g here:

http://www.dslreports.com/faq/14250

I am proposing the theory that the reason the iPhone is having such a big effect on your download rates is that you are using a channel that is being heavily overused or interfered with. See what happens when 2.4GHz is set to Channel 1, and if that doesn't change anything, try channel 11.

Edit: I just tried out inSSIDer (free download for the Windows version) for myself. That app made it as clear as can be that my router is using channel 6, that two other users are using channel 6, that there are three users using channel 11, and only one user on channel 1. So I'm going to set my router to use channel 1.
Click to expand...

All my other devices except for an ipad are wired.
 
Terpfen said:
Yes: you go into the iCloud menu and switch Photo Stream to off.

The OP has gone through some measure of convolution because he refuses to do that.
Click to expand...

Why would I shut off photostream WHEN I WANT PHOTOSTREAM? As I have already explained many times in this thread. I have also explained that setting up QoS on my router has fixed the problem. So why are people like you still responding to it? Probably because you didn't read.
 
Mopower said:
Why would I shut off photostream WHEN I WANT PHOTOSTREAM? As I have already explained many times in this thread. I have also explained that setting up QoS on my router has fixed the problem. So why are people like you still responding to it? Probably because you didn't read.
Click to expand...

Did I quote you in my most recent reply? No, I did not. I answered someone else's question.

And my answer was accurate: because you want Photo Stream, you had to do something else to get the results you desired, thus "some measure of convolution" given how generally awful it is to set up QoS in a way that doesn't make one want to bang his head against the wall.

The real question here is, if you don't care for the content of my posts, why are you reading them? Use the ignore list and brighten your day.
 
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