I just installed the ipfs desktop software but I do not understand how I am suddenly connected to 500+ other peers and what is the incoming and outgoing data that is going/coming in to and from my machine

Help
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Title. What is the incoming and outgoing data from my machine? If this is supposed to be like bittorrent then why am I sending out (or receiving) bytes of data when I’ve got no files, I’ve downloaded nothing and I haven’t viewed any webpages? Also why does the ipfs desktop software take such space (250+Mb)? Other than that, is there a way that I can limit my .ipfs folder in my users folder to take less space? Over time I do not want it to take more than 500mb of space.

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That traffic is just IPFS protocol traffic (it’s not file content data being exchanged).

You can limit the size of the IPFS repository with the Datastore.StorageMax config param.

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What are the disadvantage of doing that?

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If you put a limit on the repo size, you won’t be able to pin new content once the repo is “full”, i think that’s how it’s supposed to work.

I’m not sure exactly how internally this is handled (better ask kubo devs).

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You can still pin new content if you go over, that limit serves as a trigger for garbage collection to run (if enabled).

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Thanks @Discordian. So it’s not possible to limit the storage size for pinned content right ? Seems reasonable to give that responsibility to the user controling the repository.

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No problem! Yes, your interpretation is correct :slight_smile:.

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