Photo Stream on Mac Hogging Bandwidth: Constant Upload/Download

[rawan]

Hi,

I have a monthly quota on my DSL connection. Last couple days, I noticed huge bandwidth consumption on my account. Since the culprit could be any of a dozen devices/a family member streaming video or so, I didn't pay much attention to it, though I suspected something was wrong.

Come today. No one home but me. DSL account shows no network usage all throughout morning (when I was asleep), but starts spiking around the time I woke up and turned on my Mac. No heavy browsing, no downloads, no video streaming, no nothing. So it's impossible that I was using all the bandwidth. And well, now I know the culprit is my Mac. (Automatic software updates are turned off, by the way)

Long story short (not very short I see, sorry about that), I got Little Snitch and noticed that the total up/down traffic of Photo Stream is constantly increasing. iPhoto is closed. I haven't recently imported any large sum of images. Only the few occasional shots I took with my iPhone. Also, the latest images are on all my devices; iPhone, iPad, and iPhoto on my Mac.

So I'm not sure what exactly it is that Photo Stream is uploading/downloading continuously.

For now, I denied all Photo Stream outgoing traffic till I figure out what's wrong, and before it depletes my monthly quota. Though I have no proof, I suspect it was Photo Stream that was resposible for the heavy bandwidth usage these past few days too.

Any help or suggestions are much appreciated.

Thanks,

Rawan

 

[Macman45]

Hi,

I have a monthly quota on my DSL connection. Last couple days, I noticed huge bandwidth consumption on my account. Since the culprit could be any of a dozen devices/a family member streaming video or so, I didn't pay much attention to it, though I suspected something was wrong.

Come today. No one home but me. DSL account shows no network usage all throughout morning (when I was asleep), but starts spiking around the time I woke up and turned on my Mac. No heavy browsing, no downloads, no video streaming, no nothing. So it's impossible that I was using all the bandwidth. And well, now I know the culprit is my Mac. (Automatic software updates are turned off, by the way)

Long story short (not very short I see, sorry about that), I got Little Snitch and noticed that the total up/down traffic of Photo Stream is constantly increasing. iPhoto is closed. I haven't recently imported any large sum of images. Only the few occasional shots I took with my iPhone. Also, the latest images are on all my devices; iPhone, iPad, and iPhoto on my Mac.

So I'm not sure what exactly it is that Photo Stream is uploading/downloading continuously.

For now, I denied all Photo Stream outgoing traffic till I figure out what's wrong, and before it depletes my monthly quota. Though I have no proof, I suspect it was Photo Stream that was resposible for the heavy bandwidth usage these past few days too.

Any help or suggestions are much appreciated.

Thanks,

Rawan

Just a guess, but did you have "shared photo streams" enabled. If you aren't taking the photos, do you share your library?

Photostream tends to update when it feels like it, and I allow it to run through before I close my photo app (Aperture)...I wait until the little cog has stopped turning and disappears. I do take a lot of pictures...Average time to complete a fresh batch is around 3 mins.

 

[rawan]

Nopes. No shared Photo Stream.

Little Snitch shows the following under process btw, if that helps:

Where: /Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Library/LoginItems

 

[karthik.k]

Hi,

I have a monthly quota on my DSL connection. Last couple days, I noticed huge bandwidth consumption on my account. Since the culprit could be any of a dozen devices/a family member streaming video or so, I didn't pay much attention to it, though I suspected something was wrong.

Come today. No one home but me. DSL account shows no network usage all throughout morning (when I was asleep), but starts spiking around the time I woke up and turned on my Mac. No heavy browsing, no downloads, no video streaming, no nothing. So it's impossible that I was using all the bandwidth. And well, now I know the culprit is my Mac. (Automatic software updates are turned off, by the way)

Long story short (not very short I see, sorry about that), I got Little Snitch and noticed that the total up/down traffic of Photo Stream is constantly increasing. iPhoto is closed. I haven't recently imported any large sum of images. Only the few occasional shots I took with my iPhone. Also, the latest images are on all my devices; iPhone, iPad, and iPhoto on my Mac.

So I'm not sure what exactly it is that Photo Stream is uploading/downloading continuously.

For now, I denied all Photo Stream outgoing traffic till I figure out what's wrong, and before it depletes my monthly quota. Though I have no proof, I suspect it was Photo Stream that was resposible for the heavy bandwidth usage these past few days too.

Any help or suggestions are much appreciated.

Thanks,

Rawan

I would suggest you to use LittleSnitch, to restrict PhotoStreamAgent from using your bandwidth.

 

[rawan]

I would suggest you to use LittleSnitch, to restrict PhotoStreamAgent from using your bandwidth.

Well, that's what I did... But I was hoping to know where that bandwidth was going to. I don't want to disable and limit functionality.

At any rate, activity seems to have stopped for now (1.06 GB were downloaded, 1.33 GB uploaded).

Will keep any eye on it and see if the problem resumes.

Thanks