We get a lot of questions lately about the new data caps being imposed by a number of internet service providers, and how to use CrashPlan under those sorts of restrictions.
Online backup, like CrashPlan, is somewhat different than services like Netflix or Hulu, in that most users are only uploading a large amount of data when they first start using it. After that, the amount of data which needs to be backed up is typically a lot smaller.
Currently CrashPlan has two tools which can help manage bandwidth usage: bandwidth controls and backup sets.
CrashPlan’s Bandwidth controls
You can set the maximum amount of bandwidth with CrashPlan uses when transferring data. By setting a lower speed, you can reduce the overall amount of data that CrashPlan could possibly transfer in month. You’ll need to factor in how much of your quota will be used by other activities and set the bandwidth accordingly.
Google’s built-in calculator functions are a great way to calculate the appropriate setting based on how much of your quota you want to allocate for backup. For example, if you want to allocate 100GB per month for backup, go to a Google search page and type this as the search:
The results shows that you could continuously send 323kbps (kilobits-per-second) for the entire month to reach that amount.
By setting the CrashPlan bandwidth settings to that value, you could be sure you wouldn’t go over.
Change your backup selection
Another strategy for dealing with bandwidth caps it to simply select a limited amount of data for backup, say 100GB, then each month add more to your selection until eventually everything is backed up.
For a lot of us, 300-400 kbps is about the fastest we’ll see anyway without using a VPN tunnel to change the routing to the Crashplan Central servers to avoid the bottlenecks in your Cogent transit. It’s a shame: the hard drive seeding product would be ideal for me, were it not restricted to the US only!