BOINC Wish List

Put these items on System Tray menu next to the "Snooze" item.

1) Advanced/Preferences menu, "Use GPU while computer is in use".
2) Projects tab, Update button as "Update all projects" to send all "Ready to report" tasks.
3) Advanced menu, "Do network communications".

If they cannot all be done, then my preferences are as shown here.

respectfully, i do not agree with the abuse of the update button. if the update button can be abused, they would implement a longer minimum wait time between updates. as it is right now, you can updatre all day long if you just wait a few seconds. if you do it every 3 seconds, the server says you updated again too quickly.

on the other hand, i would like to see the server implement a longer minimum wait time between updates and network comms. a minimum of 1 hour. anything sooner and i would like the server to error back saying you updated in too quick of a sucession.

respectfully, i do not agree with the abuse of the update button. if the update button can be abused, they would implement a longer minimum wait time between updates. as it is right now, you can updatre all day long if you just wait a few seconds. if you do it every 3 seconds, the server says you updated again too quickly.

on the other hand, i would like to see the server implement a longer minimum wait time between updates and network comms. a minimum of 1 hour. anything sooner and i would like the server to error back saying you updated in too quick of a sucession.

All good points.

I would rather see it simple to use these features and let the software make the feature unavailable for a period of time (greyed out) if it is being used too much.

By the way, I found that the Update button can be pressed more than once per second, but it appears that it does not actually do all of those operations.

Also, the current Update button is much easier to abuse than my proposal.

These are the steps to submit multiple Updates with the current Update button.

1) Move the mouse to the system try icon
2) Right click
3) Wait for the menu to pop up
4) Click on "Open BOINC Manager"
5) Wait for BM to open
6) Click on "Projects"
7) Select a project
8) Click on "Update"
9) Repeat step 8

While my proposal requires the following.

1) Move the mouse to the system try icon
2) Right click
3) Wait for the menu to pop up
4) Click on "Update all projects"
5) Menu disappears
6) Repeat steps 1 through 5

All good points.

I would rather see it simple to use these features and let the software make the feature unavailable for a period of time (greyed out) if it is being used too much.

+------------------------------------+ | Open BOINC manager | +------------------------------------+ | Snooze | +------------------------------------+ | * Use GPU while computer is in use |

| Update all projects |

| Do network communications | +------------------------------------+ | About BOINC Manager | +------------------------------------+ | Exit | +------------------------------------+

However, nothing more than an hour delay should be imposed.

Also, the delay should be imposed only when the last operation was successful. If the Update button was pressed but the servers are down, why would SETI care if the user presses it again every 10 minutes?

respectfully, i do not agree with the abuse of the update button. if the update button can be abused, they would implement a longer minimum wait time between updates. as it is right now, you can updatre all day long if you just wait a few seconds. if you do it every 3 seconds, the server says you updated again too quickly.

...and how do you think the server sends a message to say that it's been too recent? It certainly isn't the DNS server giving this message.

In fact, the server has to respond to each and every request, even to say, "sorry, you already contacted me less than a minute ago. Please try again later". When the server is having comms problems for whatever reason, and everyone starts hitting this button, they are only adding to the load only to have the server tell them they've contacted too soon.

Sure, it can be argued there's no proof that too many people bother to do this, but I still don't believe it should be made easier for people to pound the servers.

on the other hand, i would like to see the server implement a longer minimum wait time between updates and network comms. a minimum of 1 hour. anything sooner and i would like the server to error back saying you updated in too quick of a sucession.

That would be fine and all, but it still requires a response from the server to tell the client that - which doesn't help if no one is getting through because of clogged pipes and dropped connections.

The local client provides the random time out, but it has to be the server that responds and says, "You last talked to me too soon, please wait a while". Otherwise, if the serer does not respond, then BOINC says an entirely different message about the server not being able to be contacted, then it tries a reference site (google.com) and if successful, concludes that the servers must be down (not entirely true, just a presumption in the wording).

The message is given by the client only after a successful communication with the server. It would make sense to build it into the client to disable the "update" button if the last communication was too recent (I mentioned this earlier), but (as also mentioned earlier) there are scenarios where doing so would make troubleshooting connection issues very difficult.

I'm not certain that having the client automatically back off without contacting the server if comms happened too recently wouldn't make things more difficult for those people, so we are left with a sort of "honor" system that people will not abuse it, but many have admitted to doing this anyway despite information against doing so.

Any figures available on abusive behaviour? Does it occur only (or mostly) after extended server downtime or just during connection issues? Maybe longer (edit) time intervals could be enforced only when really needed?

Does UPDATE really impact the servers in a big way? I mean, compared to having Tasks open all day, every day, so I can browse through them at any time, or scanning the forums? Refresh gets used a lot, too.

Is there a table of "costs" (server work required) for user initiated events?

Martin

Each message response from the server contains the minimum time to the next connection to the server. If the client would remember this in addition to the backoff time, the manager could implement a disabled update button.

• The server makes the decision on when the next connection will be allowed
  
• The client enforces that decision by disabling the button/menu-item/what-have-you that makes the connection happen, without contacting the server again just to get the same decision back again.
  

Note that the decision on when the next connection will be allowed could be made in part based on the amount of network traffic and other load on the server.

More load on the server = longer timeout periods.

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