Repost: How to limit bandwidth usage when updating apps? ("community expert" moved original to burry

[Joshua28762286vxgq]

I'm trying update creative cloud apps in the background while doing other work, or just enjoying a youtube video or Twitch stream while I wait. Instead the Creative Cloud app decides to use the maximum possible bandwidth my internet connection can provide and hogs all of that bandwidth making it impossible to do anything else on that connection.

I've tried looking in settings to turn on a limited like other similar apps have had for the better part of a decade now and there doesn't appear to be any(except for file syncing).
I've checked the Adobe community forums for solutions and just found that this issue seems to go back to 2017! Every time its been raised the Adobe employee/representative misunderstood the actual problem.

I will make it perfectly clear this time. Where is the bandwidth limiter for limiting the internet bandwidth used when updating apps?

If you make it please don't make it a percentage of something let me define it in Mbps like all the others.
Yes I do want to leave auto-updates on so it can operate in the background, but if its in the background it shouldn't disturb whatever I may be doing in the foreground, like watching/streaming a video.
If I wanted to watch paint dry I would actually watch paint dry. If I wanted to watch grass grow I would actually watch grass grow. Instead you're forcing me to watch a little circle slowing draw itself.

My original post link(at its new location):
https://community.adobe.com/t5/creative-cloud-desktop-discussions/how-to-limit-bandwidth-usage-when-...

[kglad]

this is the wrong forum for your posts, but if that's what you want, i'll move your duplicate posts here.

[Joshua28762286vxgq]

I'm trying update creative cloud apps in the background while doing other work, or just enjoying a youtube video or Twitch stream while I wait. Instead the Creative Cloud app decides to use the maximum possible bandwidth my internet connection can provide and hogs all of that bandwidth making it impossible to do anything else on that connection.

I've tried looking in settings to turn on a limited like other similar apps have had for the better part of a decade now and there doesn't appear to be any(except for file syncing).
I've checked the Adobe community forums for solutions and just found that this issue seems to go back to 2017! Every time its been raised the Adobe employee/representative misunderstood the actual problem.

I will make it perfectly clear this time. Where is the bandwidth limiter for limiting the internet bandwidth used when updating apps?

If you make it please don't make it a percentage of something let me define it in Mbps like all the others.
Yes I do want to leave auto-updates on so it can operate in the background, but if its in the background it shouldn't disturb whatever I may be doing in the foreground, like watching/streaming a video.
If I wanted to watch paint dry I would actually watch paint dry. If I wanted to watch grass grow I would actually watch grass grow. Instead you're forcing me to watch a little circle slowing draw itself.

[Joshua28762286vxgq]

For reference:
The 2017 post I found, the earliest reference to this problem and the first Google result I saw.
https://community.adobe.com/t5/download-install-discussions/download-speed-restrictions/td-p/9530723

Then here in 2020, left unresponded to for a year. Promptly misdiagnosing the problem after someone replies stating they have effectively the same problem.
https://community.adobe.com/t5/download-install-discussions/download-bandwidth-for-app-update-restri...

And there is seems to be many more similar.

[kglad]

there is none (yet).

[kglad]

in the future, to find the best place to post your message, use the list here, https://community.adobe.com/

p.s. i don't think the adobe website, and forums in particular, are easy to navigate, so don't spend a lot of time searching that forum list. do your best and we'll move the post (like this one has already been moved) if it helps you get responses.

<"moved from download & install">

[Joshua28762286vxgq]

Why did you move it?!
You literally did the same thing in one of the posts that I linked above.

I posted it in the feature request section as you directed in one of those posts.
This is related to download and install!

My post had more traction, upvotes than most other posts! I think it was in the right place.

[Kalvyn Rasquinha · Accepted solution]

Acknowledging this, @Joshua28762286vxgq, and thanks for the feedback . We'll be looking at the app update workflow later this year (additional ideas for this flow were submitted here - https://community.adobe.com/t5/creative-cloud-desktop-ideas/show-update-size-and-allow-pause-not-sto...).

[Savanna5ECE]

I absolutely want this feature, and it should absolutely be configurable in Mbps, not a percentage. It would be even better if we can use a decimal and configure it to a fraction of 1mbps. There are still those of us out there with 10mbps, 5mbps, and even 1mbps Internet connections, and need to control bandwidth usage tightly.

This has been an ongoing problem for me for years, across multiple computers. In October of 2023 I reviewed the prior forum threads complaining about this problem, and saw that no progress was being made, so I opened Case ID# ADB-31271765-H3R9. I spent hours troubleshooting back and forth, and it died after a few days when I ran out of time to keep jumping through the hoops of doing "operating system updates" and "reboot my router".

I believe the underlying problem with why the updater monopolizes bandwidth is that it intermittently opens a LOT of TCP connections to Adobe's servers. When troubleshooting this last year, I periodically paused and unpaused updates, and found that sometimes it would only open 4-6 TCP connections (or download threads), which didn't cause a significant negative effect on network performance. I was still able to browse websites, send emails, and stream videos while the updater only had 4-6 threads open.

For reasons unknown to me, the updater at some point will open a LOT more download connections, I think 22 or 24? This is what swamps the user's internet connection and makes other applications unusable. It's like having a Bittorrent client running with dozens of open connections.

This morning I encountered this same problem again, where my internet connection is virtually unusable until the updater is paused or completes the updates. I looked in my router and saw 37 TCP connections had been open in the past 30 seconds, as you can see in the attached screenshot. Something is awry with the updater's connection handling.

[Savanna5ECE]

Also, when troubleshooting this last year I was running CAKE on my router's WAN interface to help keep things running smoothly. CAKE is packet queuing software that tries to equitably allocate network resources to multiple connection streams competing for the same bandwidth. When the Adobe updater was only actively using 4-6 TCP connections, as in my screenshot above where only 4 connections have significant download bandwidth, CAKE handled it just fine, and slowed those connections down and allowed our other traffic to utilize the connection as needed.

Once the Adobe updater started using 20+ connections at once (most of them only downloading at 300-400kbps apiece), it fell apart and CAKE was unable to shape and keep things usable, because it identifies each connection as a separate traffic stream. The only way to control from a router would be to identify the connections, group them, and throttle them as if they were one stream. Since Adobe uses Akamai for updates, you also have to figure out a way to identify the Adobe Updater traffic distinctly from other Akamai traffic or you'll potentially be slowing down other services.

[Savanna5ECE]

Once again, my home network is unusable because a Creative Cloud update is saturating my 10mbps ADSL connection. After confirming which PC the update was running on, and that the bandwidth was indeed being consumed by the Adobe Updater app, I logged into my router where I found 14 active TCP connections to Akamai, totalling 9.5mbps of download throughput between them. This behavior is why there is virtually no other bandwidth available to other applications and devices!

It's unreal that such a mainstream application as Creative Cloud can have such disruptive behavior, with zero acknowledgment from the development or support team of the issue, let alone its cause.

[kglad]

@Savanna5ECE 

for you too, this forum is the incorrect place to request and adobe feature.  for a bandwidth monitor you should be post this in the cc desktop ideas forum.