Hi all, I have a question pertaining to Internet speed. We use dial-up on our local phone system (yes, I know, but it's all we have!) and I'm considering the SETI@home program. Our Internet speed is usually pretty good for dial-up, but occasionally in the evening at peak traffic times, we experience buffering when watching HD videos. I'm using a Gateway laptop running Windows 8, and keep the laptop elevated on a wire shelf to help keep it from overheating. Will running the BOINC affect our ability to watch videos, or vice-versa? I love the idea of contributing to the science, but am concerned that it will eat up bandwidth that we can't spare. Thanks!

Hi all, I have a question pertaining to Internet speed. We use dial-up on our local phone system (yes, I know, but it's all we have!) and I'm considering the SETI@home program. Our Internet speed is usually pretty good for dial-up, but occasionally in the evening at peak traffic times, we experience buffering when watching HD videos. I'm using a Gateway laptop running Windows 8, and keep the laptop elevated on a wire shelf to help keep it from overheating. Will running the BOINC affect our ability to watch videos, or vice-versa? I love the idea of contributing to the science, but am concerned that it will eat up bandwidth that we can't spare. Thanks!

Multibeam WU's are about 364 kb, Astropulse WU's are 8 Mb.

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I'm a week-old user. I've found that BOINC is fairly good at staying out of your way, and it has various settings and adjustments to that end. In your place I'd give it a try and see. If you found that no adjustment made it work well with your setup, you could always drop out.

After installation, you will have a window for something called BOINC Manager. At the bottom of that window will be a button that says "Suspend". As a worst case, you could click that button to suspend all BOINC activity (including Internet access) when necessary, and then resume it when no longer necessary. But you might find even that to be unnecessary.

I am using BOINC Manager version 7.6.22, and I am able to limit up-and-down loads to specific times (e.g., over night) using OPTIONS -> COMPUTING PREFERENCES -> DAILY SCHEDULES. The NETWORKS tab will allow volume limiting. If the computing gets in the way of watching videos, you can also limit when and how much CPU is allowed in the same window on different tabs.

I would be concerned about over heating if you have a laptop that gets hot now. You can use, for example, the program TThrottle to limit the temperatures. Just search for it or visit http://EFMER.COM