USB Downloads Data From Network?

[EMMatt]

I recently had this problem at my workplace.

Our internet connection was being bogged down by someone hogging all the download bandwidth. When I investigated, I found a Mac that had a USB plugged into it was downloading continuously at the max of our connection. The USB contains only image files and Adobe files, it was for a designer. When I removed the USB, the issues stopped.

The only lead have is that he mentioned having used Adobe Cloud for the files. Is there anything that would cause these files to try and sync constantly and use up all our bandwidth? Or any other explanation for why this USB would cause these issues? Thanks for the help.

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello and welcome.

It sounds as if they were using Adobe Cloud services, which were syncing to a USB flash drive instead of the main hard drive. I am not totally familiar with Adobe Cloud, but if it were syncing local files to ones in the cloud, using the USB flash drive is slower than a standard hard drive or SSD. In addition, when you removed the USB flash drive, Adobe Cloud lost its sync destination, which paused the sync, and restored the bandwidth.

I am not sure why it would consume all of your network bandwidth, unless you have a slower Internet connection that is shared between many people, who are simultaneously using a lot of network resources.

-Was it a USB flash drive?
-Can the Adobe Cloud user perform the sync at the end of the day to alleviate some of the bandwidth hogging?
-Do you have an IT department that can look into maximizing the network setup?

C

 

[EMMatt]

1. Yes, it was a USB flash drive

2. There's no need for him to be syncing to his account, at least here at work - it was a personal account.

3. For all intents, I am the IT department. Maximizing the network should be needed, as we have a 10MBS up/down fiber connection. The thing was, this flash drive was using up ALL of that. Other people were getting almost no bandwidth at all, and when I opened Activity Monitor on this Mac I could see it hitting 10MBS download.

I'm just glad to hear that this at least has a probable explanation in that the flash drive was syncing with Adobe Cloud. I'm not familiar with their services either, and I didn't know that syncing with a flash drive was something it could do. As you said, no idea why it was taking up all of the bandwidth; this was a 16GB drive with maybe 1.5GB of image files and InDesgin/Photoshop files on it. As far as I could tell, all of that bandwidth usage wasn't doing anything.

I'll just let the designer know what happened, so this doesn't happen again. The full story is, it sounds like the graphics department was doing some sort of show and tell, where apparently they brought in projects they'd done outside of work. So this designer brought in his stuff, on a flash drive that sounds like it happened to have been setup to sync with Adobe Cloud. I guess he left the flash drive in his computer, so when we came in Monday morning it started syncing and using up all the bandwidth for some reason.

In any case, I'm just glad to hear this has a reasonable explanation that I can tell people so this doesn't happen again. Thanks for the help.

 

[Cory Cooper]

No problem...glad to hear it's resolved. I learned a little something to about the Adobe Cloud services too!

Let us know if you have additional bandwidth issues.

C