Why is Cura using so much data upload ?

[JonD 1]

Due to my location I can only get wireless broadband with a very meagre data allowance. I have noticed a huge increase in data usage when I use Cura. I checked the network activity/traffic and CuraEngine.exe is uploading heaps of data to somewhere.

Checking a bit further I found that whenever I load a file on the platform, it sends of about 10 as much data as the size of the actual file. This got ridiculous the other day when I was loading multiple small items on the platform. In no time at all I saw 500MB of my data allowance disappear - all attributed to CuraEngine.exe I am limited to 15GB a month - that's less than 500Mb a day, so this has become a major problem for me.

Why is it doing it , where is it going, what is it being collected for, and how to I stop it? If I block or disconnect the internet while I'm using Cura, that doesn't seem to help either because even if I then switch Cura off when I've finished, and then connect the internet back up again, it seems as it it has been buffered and then sends all the data.

Using latest version of Cura 2.1 but I think it also does in on 15.04.5 .. There is a Setting in General "send anonymous print information" and this switched off.

[nallath 1,124]

CuraEngine isn't uploading any data to the interwebs. It's sending data through a local socket to the front end. Your operating system might (incorrectly) see this as network traffic.

The flow is as follows;

1. Cura frontend sends model data to the backend.

2. Backend does a bunch of slicing

3. Backend sends sliced polygons back for visualisation

4. Backend sends g-code back for saving.

Every time you change a setting and wait a bit, this process is repeated.

The anonymous print information is only sent when a file is written to disk / file sent to usb/ etc (so not every slice). At that point it only sends the values of your settings, your operating system, some info on your processor and a hash of the model. All of which are extremely small.

The only data that we ever send to the interwebs is the print data and that is extremely little. Refreshing the ultimaker page will have a greater impact.

[ahoeben 1,986]

Note: You can turn off the sending of slice statistics on the General pane of the preferences

[JonD 1]

Thanks for the explanation guys. That is a great relief to know!

I was monitoring network traffic using a feature of Kaspersky, Obviously it is incorrectly reporting it (or maybe I'm incorrectly interpreting what it's showing me).