Hi,
Given that more than one project has seen server problems recently, I think it would be useful to be able to suspend uploads and avoid backoffs etc until a project gets back up and running properly
This free's up CPU cycles for crunching and avoids an upload server being swamped.

Regards,

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Cliff,
Been there, Done that, Still no damm T shirt!

The idea behind upload back-offs is to allow them to restart automatically after an server (or connectivity) issue that prevents uploads (the same applies to downloads).
Each project (SETI, GPUGRID, etc.) have their own servers, thus the impact of say SETI not being able to upload data is restricted to SETI. Indeed within the SETI group of projects, depending on what the problem is, it may only affect SETI, but leave Seti-Beta running quite happily.
At the cruncher end the load of having a pile of work waiting to upload is mostly disk space, as each server failed server contact only takes a few CPU cycles, as does the additional task placed into the scheduler for to time the next server contact.
Of course if the issue is on the download side of the coin then you can always set "No New tasks" for that project until such time as you see the project is back on the road, and you can try to abandon any stalled downloads, but I think that may fail depending on the nature of the problem.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?