Regular BOINC users will discover that the Network and CPU usage settings on the website Device Profiles (limited to just 1 general daily sequence) or the Local Preferences as available in BOINC 5.8 and up which allows a different activity for each day of the week.

Several caveats to know before hand:

• The times can spill over into the next day, but can never exceed 23:59 continuous run time or network permission.
  
• Also, there is a bug (feature): Somehow the conversion from regular time notation to decimal storage and looses 1 minute.... just ignore.
  
• As is applicable for any Network/Crunching scheme that is used by BOINC it needs to be activated in the Activity menu by either/both selecting 'Network Activity Based on Preferences' & 'Run based on Preferences'. Latter will also suspend any networking.
  
• The Client Scheduler follows the times as set on the computer it is running on.
  
• Most important, once the local preferences for scheduled networking and computing are set, the website preferences as valid at that point become locked in for that client's and become the local preferences (override). This means that all other preferences, except science selection and idle-go-to-sleep, need future local modification by the user
So here goes:

1. An office worker likes absolute and total availability of the computer and no effects for the company and colleagues on the networking. S/he so decides that Monday-Friday nothing should happen between 07:00 (early workers consideration) and 18:00 (into overtime), not accounting for the workaholics. The machine is on 24/7 as s/he occasionally needs to dial in from remote to look at or fetch stuff when on the road. This would be the scheme to go with that.

Comments: The 18:00-17:58 on day 5 means it will process/network from Friday 18:00 to Saturday 17:58. From there day 6 schedule kicks in and takes it through Sunday and day 7 takes it from Sunday through Monday morning when back in the office. Day 1-4 Monday/Thursday would not be needed entry because of the overall schedule, but were entered to clearly show what the times are that are covered from evenings till next morning.

2. A simplified solution, similar to the previous and tested to work with client 6.10.58 and above. Again an office worker who likes to prevent the network use of BOINC from 06:00AM to 09:00PM for Monday through Friday inclusive.

Comments: Setting the daily default this way, and Saturday-Sunday as exceptions, ensures that also the Monday period from 00:00-06:00AM networking is permitted too. The suspending and reactivation is then recorded and confirmed in the message log as

Mon 21-02-2011 06:00 Suspending network activity - time of day
Mon 21-02-2011 21:00 Resuming network activity

And of course, don't forget to set the Activity menu option to "Network activity based on preferences"


In installments some more samples will be posted here. Post on the BOINC Support forum or in Chat Room in a BOINC Scheduling themed thread and we'll dream up a few more or post one of your own with explanation and motivation (why :-) and it will get added with credit (after peer review ;>)

enjoy