Use the backup agent with limited bandwidth

Overview

The backup agent is designed to make minimal demands on your computer's resources, and favors quiet background operation over outright speed. There may be times that you need to reduce the bandwidth you allow the agent to use, such as:

• If you have limited bandwidth or a bandwidth cap.
• If you are using voice over IP (VoIP).
• If backup activity is competing with other network applications, and you would prefer to allocate more bandwidth to those applications.

This article outlines some adjustments that allow the backup agent to use less bandwidth, as well as some items to consider before changing any settings.

Video

Watch the short video below to learn how to change bandwidth settings (starts at 01:36).

Considerations

• By adjusting the settings described below, the agent will use less bandwidth, but it also slows down your backup.
• Results of changing settings may not be immediately apparent. You may need to wait a short time before noticing improvements.
• You can return to the default bandwidth settings at any time.

Before you begin

Review your file selection to ensure that you have only selected files that you need to back up. Backing up system files or application data can dramatically increase your bandwidth usage.

Steps

By default, the backup agent has limits in place to prevent it from using too many system resources. If you have limited bandwidth, a bandwidth cap, or utilize VoIP, there are several settings you can adjust in the backup agent to reduce the impact of the backup agent on your bandwidth. Changing these settings reduces the system resources available to the backup agent, but extends the amount of time required to backup your files

Changing settings
Try the options below in the order presented. If you see enough reduction in speed after one or two changes, avoid making more changes.

Schedule backup

If there are certain times of day during which you want to reduce the backup agent's bandwidth usage, you can schedule specific days and times that you want the backup agent to back up. For example, you may want to schedule backups to occur overnight, when you aren't using the Internet.

To change your backup schedule:

1. Open the backup agent. 
2. Select  Settings.
3. Select Backup Sets.
4. Next to Backup Schedule, click Change. 
   Note: Your administrator may prevent editing the backup schedule settings. 
5. Select Only run between specified times and set a start and end time for your backup window. 
6. Click Save.
   

Change bandwidth settings

To reduce the amount of network bandwidth the backup agent uses, you can lower the rate at which files are sent from the backup agent to the backup destination.

To change the sending rate in network settings:

1. Open the backup agent.
2. Select  Settings.
3. Select Network.
   
4. In Bandwidth Settings, click Change for WAN or LAN. WAN is for sending data over the Internet and LAN is for sending data over your computer's local network.
5. For both WAN and LAN, change Limit sending rate when away to or Limit sending rate when present to as needed. (On Linux, you can only change Limit sending rate to.) Start by setting the limits to 100 kbps.
6. Click Save.
   

Minimum sending limits
When setting network sending limits, do not set a rate lower than 0.10 Mbps or 100 Kbps. Rates lower than 0.10 Mbps can prevent devices from communicating with the Incydr cloud server, which can stop backups. To stop backup entirely, do not adjust sending limits. Instead, you can pause backup or only allow backups at specified times.

Related topics

• Speed up your backup
• Optimize energy settings
• How does the backup agent detect away and present settings?
• Exclude networks used for backup
• Adjust backup agent settings for memory usage with large backups
• Backup