off-peak leeching on os x

I recently switched internet provider, and I’m on a plan that has peak and off-peak usage times, with a separate bandwidth quota for each. Since the off-peak period is 4am to 9am, and I’m don’t get up early enough (or go to sleep late enough) to ever see 4am on a weekday night, I was wondering how I could make use of this time for bittorrent leeching (seeding is not an issue because the ISP doesn’t limit uploads, AFAIK).

Actually it’s pretty easy. Here is a quick guide to how I did it, on OS X Leopard.

Wake up the computer at 3.55am (or whenever the off-peak time starts)

System Preferences > Energy Saver > Schedule. There is a “start up or wake” option there. Set it to the time just before the off peak period starts.

Start Azureus at 4am

Sadly on OS X there is no equivalent to the wonderful uTorrent (yet). So we are stuck with ugly, bloated old Azureus, with its endless configuration options and, under its new name “Vuze”, a raft of stupid social networking, search features and a UI built for idiots (thankfully these can be turned off). What we need to do is to start Azureus when the offpeak time occurs, if it’s not already running.

I thought about using cron, which I have always kind of hated, but then I found this little utility that makes launchd management really simple.

So – I made this plist, named it com.vuze.azureus and stuck it in ~/Library/LaunchAgents.

Restrict downloads during peak hours

There is a handy plugin available for Azureus called Speed Scheduler that allows you to schedule download and upload speeds for different times of day. I haven’t experimented with it much, but I get the feeling it’s better to schedule restrictions rather than apply a global restriction and try to free it up for a period … it also doesn’t understand wrapping a time period past midnight, so I created two schedules, one for midnight to 4am, the other from 9am to midnight – turned off downloads altogether and limited uploads somewhat.

So – as long as you remember not to turn off your computer at night – you should now be able to make full use of your off peak period. Leech to your heart’s content.