Constantly Downloading

Hi Guys,

I have had this problem for a while now and its starting to really get annoying.

Basically my Mac is constantly downloading at around 60Kb/s, I have used little snitch and found the activity is coming from mDNSResponder. I have been Googling this for hours and found no resolution to it.

This is a relatively new situation but I have had it before. I resolved it last time by using a Time Machine back up and going back to that and the problem went away, as you can probably understand I really don't want to have to do that again but I will if I must, I just don't understand what it is downloading and why it is doing it 24/7

Any ideas would be useful.

Cheers.

Have you enabled music sharing in iTunes or printer sharing in System Preferences > Sharing

No bud, neither are on. Getting really confused I am reaching for my Boot disk as we speak and warming up the Time Machine drive. lol.

nDNSresponder = Bonjour.
Like louishen says, you should be looking at all your "sharing" services - hard drives on another computer, shared printers, iTunes libraries, etc.

mDNSResponder is a daemon invoked at boot and obviously is continuing to function. Have you considered disabling or turning off? Are you using Leopard or Snow Leopard, always helps if you provide operating system?


http://tech.karbassi.com/2007/11/06/leopard-turn-off-bonjour-mdnsresponder/

This problem is on Snow Leopard 10.6.7. I have even done a format of the HDD and re-installed. Really confused as I have nothing shared, printers or anything. Really am baffled. I have tried force quitting the mDNS process in activity monitor but it just reappears.

Banging my head against a brick wall as I type. Maybe I should just leave it until it fills my HDD completely and then return it to Apple and complain.

Did you actually try the suggestion of going into Terminal to disable? Here is the command:-


sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist

Everything I have read indicates that wont work on Snow Leopard so I havent tried it but I'll give it a go.

Do you have some indication that you are actually downloading something? My guess is at worst you are indexing (spotlight) some drive.

I tried that string in Terminal and it stops all web based traffic however torrents remain active and the constant 60Kb/s downloading stops. However if I load the Daemon back in it starts again. Really confused now.

It appears as if it is actually downloading something as Little Snitch and Virus Barrier Firewall are telling me there is activity on an external IP.

Will Apple have any more idea on this? Should I call AppleCare?

Suggest uninstalling Little Snitch and Virus Barrier Firewall and see how you go! Remember uninstall and not drag to trash.

If you feel you must use AV software download the free ClamXAV. There are no Mac OS X viruses.

This is not a problem with either Little Snitch or VirusBarrier. This problem started before both of those were put on my system.

I just dont get what this thing is actually doing.

I will try what you suggest but I doubt there will be any change.

I think im just going to contact Apple about this as it is really starting to annoy now.