Will bad Internet affect Folding@Home?

[LordMastodon]

As the title says, my Internet is kind of shitty, and I'm kind of unfamiliar with how Folding@Home actually works. I've managed to install it and everything's working, but since the client opened in Chrome and the URL seems to be an actual website, not localhost or anything (albeit missing an HTTP/S:// at the beginning) I suspect it might work over the Internet. I just want to know if the fact that my Internet is crap will affect my Folding@Home performance. Thanks!

[themctipers]

Nope. As long as i assume you have Internet for most of the day

 

how I assume it works is as its assigned a new project, it starts to compute it on your pc but uses no internet. As soon as its finished it submits the data and requests for a new "bit" to work on 

 

 

[LordMastodon]

Just now, themctipers said:

Nope. As long as i assume you have Internet for most of the day

 

how I assume it works is as its assigned a new project, it starts to compute it on your pc but uses no internet. As soon as its finished it submits the data and requests for a new "bit" to work on 

 

 

 

Yeah, I have reliable Internet, it's just slow.

 

That seems like it's probably the way it works, but like you said, it has to be assigned a new project and then upload the data, so that might be a bottleneck there.

[Carlos1010]

3 minutes ago, themctipers said:

Nope. As long as i assume you have Internet for most of the day

 

how I assume it works is as its assigned a new project, it starts to compute it on your pc but uses no internet. As soon as its finished it submits the data and requests for a new "bit" to work on 

 

 

What does folding mean at home?

[tobben]

Not sure if you are using the chrome client 

or the actual desktop client with web control. 

 

Either way, regular wu's aren't any bigger
than a few MB, they aren't that big. So it

should mostly be a non-issue unless you

have dial up 54k kinda speeds. 

[themctipers]

Just now, Carlos1010 said:

What does folding mean at home?

You're helping with cancer research by using your computers excess processing power to simulate folding proteins. 

2 minutes ago, LordMastodon said:

Yeah, I have reliable Internet, it's just slow.

 

That seems like it's probably the way it works, but like you said, it has to be assigned a new project and then upload the data, so that might be a bottleneck there.

Yeah, but it can upload when it's finished and after when it's working On a new task. 

[LordMastodon]

Just now, Carlos1010 said:

What does folding mean at home?

 

It's protein folding that you do at home, and TL;DR is that they're trying to cure diseases like Alzheimer's, Cancer, Huntington's and Parkinson's.

[Julian5]

1 minute ago, Carlos1010 said:

What does folding mean at home?

Its a project people can work on, basically send computing task to individuals for them to solve them.

[Carlos1010]

Just now, Julian5 said:

Its a project people can work on, basically send computing task to individuals for them to solve them.

What do you mean by sending computing tasks? This is so new for me lol. 

[Julian5]

Just now, Carlos1010 said:

What do you mean by sending computing tasks? This is so new for me lol. 

You have to slove a problem sent to you by foilding at home using your computer.

[LordMastodon]

Just now, tobben said:

Not sure if you are using the chrome client 

or the actual desktop client with web control. 

 

Either way, regular wu's aren't any bigger
than a couple MB, they aren't that big.

So it should mostly be a non-issue unless

you have dial up 54k kinda speeds. 

 

I'm using the desktop client with web control, but I'd assume it has to send things over the Internet anyway in order to know what jobs it has to do and send data back to Stanford.

 

Anyway, speedtest.net says that I've got a ping of 14 ms, a down speed of 15 Mbps and an up speed of about 0.8 Mbps. Probably should have told you that earlier, now that I think about it, but there you go anyway. Will that be fine?

[Carlos1010]

4 minutes ago, Julian5 said:

You have to slove a problem sent to you by foilding at home using your computer.

Oh I saw a video is it like a research company using your PC's power to research for diseases? 

[Julian5]

Just now, Carlos1010 said:

Oh I saw a video is it like a research company using your PC's power to research for diseases? 

Exactly

[LordMastodon]

Just now, Julian5 said:

You have to slove a problem sent to you by foilding at home using your computer.

To clarify, you as a human being don't actually solve the problems, a server at Stanford sends your computer what is essentially a huge math problem and your computer takes advantage of CPU/GPU power you're not currently using and uses it to solve the math problem, and then when it's done it sends the results back to Stanford. This is known as distributed computing and is useful because all of the computers in the world combined have higher processing power than pretty much any supercomputer we can currently build, so people take advantage of that in an unobtrusive way.

[Carlos1010]

1 minute ago, LordMastodon said:

To clarify, you as a human being don't actually solve the problems, a server at Stanford sends your computer what is essentially a huge math problem and your computer takes advantage of CPU/GPU power you're not currently using and uses it to solve the math problem, and then when it's done it sends the results back to Stanford. This is known as distributed computing and is useful because all of the computers in the world combined have higher processing power than pretty much any supercomputer we can currently build, so people take advantage of that in an unobtrusive way.

So if I sign up does that mean I help cure cancer?

[LordMastodon]

Just now, Carlos1010 said:

So if I sign up does that mean I help cure cancer?

Pretty much, yep. Depending on which Work Unit you receive, or you can specify that you want to only cure Cancer.

[Julian5]

2 minutes ago, LordMastodon said:

To clarify, you as a human being don't actually solve the problems, a server at Stanford sends your computer what is essentially a huge math problem and your computer takes advantage of CPU/GPU power you're not currently using and uses it to solve the math problem, and then when it's done it sends the results back to Stanford. This is known as distributed computing and is useful because all of the computers in the world combined have higher processing power than pretty much any supercomputer we can currently build, so people take advantage of that in an unobtrusive way.

Yeah I did not explain it properly, but its just taking advantage of your proccessing power when you are not using it.

[tobben]

3 hours ago, LordMastodon said:

I'm using the desktop client with web control, but I'd assume it has to send things over the Internet anyway in order to know what jobs it has to do and send data back to Stanford.

 

Anyway, speedtest.net says that I've got a ping of 14 ms, a down speed of 15 Mbps and an up speed of about 0.8 Mbps. Probably should have told you that earlier, now that I think about it, but there you go anyway. Will that be fine?

That should be perfectly fine as long as it is 
somewhat reasonably stable. Your upload 
is abit low, but not an actual problem as 

far as folding goes. 

 

You download a work unit, do the work then
upload it, upload is usually bigger than the 

download. Considering you can download 

a wu in anything from 1-5 seconds it
shouldn't a problem. 

[Carlos1010]

2 minutes ago, LordMastodon said:

Pretty much, yep.

Will this eat up your CPU life because it's using so much intelligence. I'm referring to a I7 6700k

[LordMastodon]

Just now, Carlos1010 said:

Will this eat up your CPU life because it's using so much intelligence. I'm referring to a I7 6700k

No, it'll only eat up CPU power that you're not using. It really shouldn't have any effect on your lifespan too, and any effect it does have will most likely not be noticed since the actual span of time you will use your CPU is normally much shorter than the amount of time it will be generally be in a useable state.

[LordMastodon]

Just now, tobben said:

That should be perfectly fine as long as it is 
somewhat reasonably stable. Your upload 
is abit low, but not an actual problem as 

far as folding does. 

 

You download a work unit, do the work then
upload it, upload is usually bigger than the 

download. Considering you can download 

a wu in anything from 1-5 seconds it
shouldn't a problem. 

 

OK, that's good. Thanks for clearing that up.

[blackmage1134]

my internet is only 3 Mb's down and 2 Mb's up.
not an issue with me. it does use about 2 GB a month but usage will be by how many WU's you can do.