[Mac] Constant low-bandwidth steam of network activity

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Schmye Bubbula
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Re: [Mac] Constant low-bandwidth steam of network activity

Post by Schmye Bubbula »

^ I already said in the first post that I disabled all telemetry, Health Report, etc. in Preferences > Advanced > Data Choices. And I've repeatedly said that it occurs in a Safe Mode launch, so that rules out automatic updates of search engines or extensions, right? How does anything Amazon puts in get past Safe Mode?
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Grumpus
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Re: [Mac] Constant low-bandwidth steam of network activity

Post by Grumpus »

Ask Mozilla?
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allande
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Re: [Mac] Constant low-bandwidth steam of network activity

Post by allande »

I didn't see you mentioning disabling the safe browsing feature, which slowly downloads a hashed list of bad websites, perhaps from an amazon cloud server. It can be disabled by under options security unchecking the boxes for "block dangerous and deceptive content." Also see here: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Connections_e ... Firefox%29 and https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/ho ... onnections
Schmye Bubbula
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Re: [Mac] Constant low-bandwidth steam of network activity

Post by Schmye Bubbula »

^ Many thanks, allande; good suggestion! I disabled the several Safe Browsing checkboxes, but, alas, it didn't help. I'll try customizing in about:config the various settings in your links, and report back here my findings.
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Grumpus
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Re: [Mac] Constant low-bandwidth steam of network activity

Post by Grumpus »

What you need to look at are the new extensions being provided by Mozilla.
These may or might not be employed as experimental for testing.
Follow on Search, Script Recipe Client, Click to Play and Screen shots
Screen shots requires agreement to use Mozilla cloud services
Follow on Search is testing to better provide information on secondary searches, searches which continue on from links in the initial search.
Script Recipe Client is for testing and you might or might not be chosen to participate, apparently without notice.
ClicktoPlay is for your protection with media.
Try searching here for better descriptions Main Page Wiki Mozilla
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Schmye Bubbula
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Re: [Mac] Constant low-bandwidth steam of network activity

Post by Schmye Bubbula »

^ What does any of that have to do with the topic of this thread, to wit, continuous low-level networking activity in my default profile—even in safe mode—but not in other profiles? Am I missing your point? Do any of those new extensions being provided by Mozilla run in my Firefox version 48.0.2? (Your link says it's for Firefox 55.) In any event, do any of those new extensions being provided by Mozilla run in safe mode? And even if either were the case, why does my constant background network stream disappear in other profiles, where the new extensions being provided by Mozilla that you mention presumably would be active? And my earlier post revealed that my curious streams go to & from Amazon Data Center, not the Mozilla cloud services you adduced. I'm sorry if I'm not following you, but maybe I'm just dense.
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therube
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Re: [Mac] Constant low-bandwidth steam of network activity

Post by therube »

Mozilla uses various Amazon cloud services.
Fire 750, bring back 250.
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Schmye Bubbula
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Re: [Mac] Constant low-bandwidth steam of network activity

Post by Schmye Bubbula »

^ Do you know whether Mozilla's use of Amazon cloud services occurs in Safe Mode? And why doesn't it occur in my other profiles even when not in Safe Mode? In any case, is Mozilla's use of Amazon cloud services continuous, like I'm experiencing, even when all telemetry, Health Reports, Sync, etc. are disabled?
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DanRaisch
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Re: [Mac] Constant low-bandwidth steam of network activity

Post by DanRaisch »

In any event, do any of those new extensions being provided by Mozilla run in safe mode?
All extensions are disabled in Safe Mode.
Do you know whether Mozilla's use of Amazon cloud services occurs in Safe Mode?
Unless extensions were involved in connecting to those services, the connections would be active in Safe Mode as in standard mode.
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therube
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Re: [Mac] Constant low-bandwidth steam of network activity

Post by therube »

Pocket (not that I know what it is) seems as if it would not be affected by Safe Mode.
(Pocket does not show as an "extension" or "plugin".)
Don't know if applies to other "stuff" that may be include in FF?)
Fire 750, bring back 250.
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RobertJ
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Re: [Mac] Constant low-bandwidth steam of network activity

Post by RobertJ »

.
Since you use Little Snitch you must have allowed outbound connections for FF. In my case I only allow FF to connect to ports 80 and 443 using TCP. Look at what is allowed for FF in your Little Snitch rules.

.
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dickvl
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Re: [Mac] Constant low-bandwidth steam of network activity

Post by dickvl »

See also the about:networking page.
Schmye Bubbula
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Re: [Mac] Constant low-bandwidth steam of network activity

Post by Schmye Bubbula »

therube, I didn't know what Pocket is, either, so I googled around for it, and evidently if you use Pocket, you have to be signed-up for it, and I'm not, I so I guess I can rule that out.

RobertJ, like you, I have Little Snitch set to allow ports 80 and 443, plus a few other site-specific ones, but none involving my chronic stream's ports listed in the packet capture in my earlier post such as ports 24141, 24142, 24171, 24173, 24175 — so I don't understand how my chronic stream gets through Little Snitch in the first place. I looked up some of those ports and, e.g., port 24141 is some "med-ltp" service by Apple associated with "web service with performance cache," but I can't find anything on google saying exactly what "med-ltp" is.

dickvl, I didn't know what I was supposed to be looking for in about:networking, but I poked around, and under WebSockets I noticed a bunch of push.services.mozilla.com which resolves to some 36 IP addresses, among which fall every single one of the IP addresses used by my curious streams! So if I block outgoing connections to that push.services.mozilla.com hostname in Little Snitch, it brings my curious streams to a grinding halt, both outgoing and incoming as well.

Well, that stops the proximate culprit, but I still don't know what caused it in the first place, and which setting I have that enables it. And there remain occasional sporadic bursts of networking activity, as if what's behind this is looking to start up the streams again, but cannot because of by block.

Does this now provide enough of a clue as to what's going on?
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Grumpus
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Re: [Mac] Constant low-bandwidth steam of network activity

Post by Grumpus »

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Schmye Bubbula
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Re: [Mac] Constant low-bandwidth steam of network activity

Post by Schmye Bubbula »

^ In accordance with that link, I went to Preferences > Content > Notifications—Choose which sites are allowed to send you notifications > Choose...

("Push Services" is found nowhere in prefs, but if you click the Learn more button for Notifications, it goes to that same link, but you'd have to already know that it's about Push Services before you'd know to click it.)

I was surprised to find a number of websites I frequent in there; I don't remember signing-up for notifications with any of them. Anyway, I thought that I had finally found how to turn-off this chronic streaming, but, alas, after removing all of the entries in the list, it didn't even make a dent in the network activity.

I otherwise don't see an on-off switch in prefs. I did a search in about:config for "push" and it came up with a lot of dom.push entries, and one of them had dom.push.serverURL as wss://push.services.mozilla.com/, but setting some of them to disabled, such as dom.push.enabled, still doesn't turn-off the network streaming.

Does anyone know how to turn this thing off?
• Firefox 45.9.0 ESR
• Mac OS X 10.6.8
• MacBook Pro (5,2) 17-inch, "Mid 2009"
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