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My Orbi RBR40 (FW v2.7.4.24) runs speed tests automatically too frequently
I've discovered that since my ISP increased the bandwidth of my plan, I'm running at -- and have exceeded once -- the data cap that they impose. After much digging and trudging, I see that my RBR40 is issuing speed tests roughly every 2 hours and with the increased capacity it is consuming almost 1Gb per execution. Over the course of a month, this is working out to be almost 30% of my data capacity. I see the Speed Test option in the router administration pages, but it doesn't have any obvious configuration to modify how often the tests run. I really don't want to have to block access to speedtest.net, but I don't see any other way around this headache. Does anyone have any ideas of how to configure my RBR40 to run speed tests less frequently?
Excellent question and it has triggered a thought. Yes, it's that grafana. It's in a Home Assistant instance. It gets the data from the Traffic Meter feature of the router, which is coming from the Netgear integration with HomeAssistant. Your question made me think about that so I started digging through their docs. This bit is especially interesting, particularly the note of warning at the end of the paragraph. I know that I disabled the downlink and uplink entities long ago, but I don't remember doing anything with the ping entity. So, if that's still enabled in HA, then the integration is still running the full speed test every 2 hours. I may be taking an extended lunch break to head home and verify if any one of those 3 entities are still enabled and if so, I'll disable it and unblock access to speedtest.net. Assuming that 1) I don't see a spike in network traffic every two hours and 2) the last updated field in the Admin pages of the Router management remains unchanged, then I think we've found the culprit. It's also interesting to me that the HA integration might be updating the last run time value of the Speed Test results page in the router's management tool -- but if it's a true integration and invoking speed test as offered by the router, then it makes sense. If this is the issue, which won't surprise me at this point based on those docs, my frustration with lack of configuration flexibility persists, but will have moved from the Netgear product to this 3rd-party integration with the product. I'll share updates here hopefully later today when I get hands-on with it to check the state of the 3 named entities that would trigger the speed test.
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This seems to be a duplicate of this message:
It's the Orbi invocation of SpeedTest that's gener... - NETGEAR Communities
JamminJimmy wrote:
After much digging and trudging, I see that my RBR40 is issuing speed tests roughly every 2 hours and with the increased capacity it is consuming almost 1Gb per execution.
Weird. Where do you see that?
I have never seen a router of any sort "issuing speed tests".
What do you see in the router's logs?
What modem/ONT/gateway connects the router to the Internet?
While many questions about routers are generic and could be answered anywhere, some things need specialist knowledge.
You might get more help, and find earlier questions and answers specific to your device, in the appropriate section for your hardware. That's probably here:
Orbi - NETGEAR Communities
You might like to search there for messages related to your issue.
I will ask the Netgear moderator to move your message.
In the meantime you could visit the support pages:
Support | NETGEAR
Feed in your model number and check the documentation for your hardware. Look at the label on the device for the model number.
Check for various troubleshooting tips.
You may have done this already. I can't tell from your message.
I mention it because Netgear stopped supplying printed manuals and CD versions some years ago and people sometimes miss the downloads.I've had multiple orbi's and even the RBR40 version you have (and its running at a friends right now).
None of them have ran schedules speedtests. I logged in remotely and checked just to make sure.
Makes me suspicious that something else is going on.
What makes you point it to the orbi? Whats telling you its running every 2 hours?
Have you tried a factory reset?
What modem/gateway is it connected to?
I track the data usage via Grafana. I see a spike approximately every 2 hours. I cross reference the time of the spike to the time reported on the Speed Test page in the admin console (web pages) of the Orbi and the spike correlates precisely to the last time the speed test reports having been run. The Speed Test page has a button to manually execute the test and the test results and the time the test last ran. It has no schedule to manage the execution.
your Netgear RBR40 router is automatically running speed tests at regular intervals, consuming a significant portion of your data cap. Unfortunately, if the router's administration pages don't offer a straightforward option to modify the frequency of these tests, you may need to explore alternative solutions:
Investigate whether there are any third-party firmware options available for your router model that provide more advanced configuration options. Some open-source firmware projects, such as DD-WRT or OpenWrt, offer additional features and customization options compared to stock firmware. Alternatively, you might find scripts or custom solutions developed by the community that address this issue.
Consider setting up a separate device or software on your network to monitor bandwidth usage and schedule speed tests at less frequent intervals. This approach would involve using a dedicated device or software to periodically perform speed tests, rather than relying on the router itself.
Explore whether your router or any connected devices offer built-in bandwidth monitoring and management features. Some routers allow you to set bandwidth limits or prioritize traffic for specific devices, which could help you manage your data usage more effectively.
If you're consistently exceeding your data cap due to the router's speed tests, consider reaching out to your ISP to discuss alternative options or upgrading your plan to accommodate the increased data usage.
In the meantime, if blocking access to speedtest.net is the only viable solution to mitigate data usage, you may need to temporarily implement this measure until a more permanent solution can be found. However, it's worth exploring other avenues first to see if there's a way to configure or manage the speed tests directly from the router's settings or through additional tools and resources.
Solution found; I'm providing a TL;DR answer for others who might find this in the future:
The Netgear integration for HomeAssistant runs SpeedTest every 2 hours without offering the ability to modify that timing. The execution of that operation consumes roughly 2x the bandwidth offered by my ISP (ie: 500Mbps download speed --> 1Gb data consumption per execution). Given my ISP's metering restriction, this resulted in roughly 33% data allocation consumed by speed tests. I resolved this issue by disabling the 1) downlink, 2) uplink, and 3) ping entities of the Netgear integration exposed by the Netgear HomeAssistant Integration.
I wasn't familar with the netgear home integration, but it looks like its done through public support on github. Not from netgear. Might be something to bring up on the github forum the ability to change the timings of it to make it maybe daily/weekly, etc.
The site does show it runs speedtests every 2 hours. That'd kill my data too.
