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I've been searching the forums and the Internet in general, today, as I have gotten my first notice from Comcast that, lo, I am over my 1 Terabyte limit, this month. It has been inching toward that mark for a bit, and last month was around 944 Gig. What can I say: We are a connected, gaming, streaming family and our Comcast link is a vital utility. I have seen suggestions on this forum to "just disconnect everything and reconnect until you find the hog." With 30ish devices on the network, 4 kids, 2 renters, and countless visitors, this is simply not a possibility. What I could do is set up a different router (preferably one with this feature) and move the connections over to it one-by-one until I find the offender. If I have to go that route, I highly doubt the Orbi would get reconnected. Which is a shame because it is a pretty decent solution for everything else.
I would like for Netgear to seriously consider giving customers an option for this data. There are many ways to do it, but ANY of them would be acceptable to me. I'm a long-time networking pro, so even if these are scary for some people, at least it would be an option.
- Do the metering in the device with display of the statistics in the interface and in the app. This is obviously going to make the most customers happy because it would give us a report per-device of the usage. This isn't rocket science: Even if the device has a database limitation of 100 devices to monitor, or even 50, it would be useful. COMCAST does it on their modem devices for xFi. It can't be that hard.
- Do the metering externally by providing SNMP statistics on a per-device basis for smaller timeframes. This would mean that the Orbi doesn't have to store "dead" devices forever and would be up to whatever stat-gathering tool was used.
- Do the metering externally by providing some app that collects the data to a desktop. Maybe Java so you can hit Windows, Linux, and Mac all at once with it.
- Provide traffic mirroring to a selected wired port. This would at least give me the ability to plug in Wireshark or other tools to see what is going on. It would be super useful for troubleshooting intermittent issues and not just bandwidth monitoring.
- Provide netflow/sflow output to a collector on the home network. This would also have broader uses than just bandwidth monitoring, but it is potentially the hardest to use solution in this list. If it is easy to implement in the Orbi (i.e., the chips already support it), then I'll take it happily.
- Other things I haven't mentioned. Look, I'm desperate, here. I will find a way to use anything that helps.
I get 2 months free "warnings" from Comcast, but the cost of not knowing this outweighs replacing the Orbi. Once I start getting charged $10/50 Gig, I'm going to need to know right then and there. And if I don't have a reasonable answer by that time, another Orbi will be going out to eBay.
195 Comments
+1
+1
The Deco devices do live bandwidth monitoring. I switched to the Orbi because the reviews and communities said the signal quality was better on this premium router (which has proved to be true for me), but losing live bandwidth monitoring feels like a good reason to go look for another product next time I upgrade. Would be great to see a firmware upgrade to enable this...
+1
Agreed. My LAN has, from time-to-time, as many as 3 wired and 10 wireless devices connected. After seeing a spike from my ISP, I could not, even using the logs, determine which device(s) was the culprit. Please, Netgear, include this feature!
Windywave
Curiousity: lots of people here all having an issue with Comcast/Xfinity -- possibly all starting in December -- based on recent package changes? I was in their 150Mbit tier for two years - NO problem. It would take us 28 or so days to come within 90% - and that's with three kids (gamer, video streamer, etc) AND two displays streaming HD content from Netflix. Then, we upgrade to their 400Mbit tier and bam - no behavior changes at home, yet, we somehow chew through 90% in 17 days. WTF? Xfinity can't show details on our usage because we don't have their equipment, and Netgear/Orbi doesn't support this critical feature in their high end mesh network product (RBR50 - AC3000) that covers 7500sqft and consistently great coverage/throughput. Anyone else seeing this? Please report this both to Netgear as a P1 feature request AND Xfinity/Comcast so they know there's an issue too.
Curiousity: lots of people here all having an issue with Comcast/Xfinity -- possibly all starting in December -- based on recent package changes? I was in their 150Mbit tier for two years - NO problem. It would take us 28 or so days to come within 90% - and that's with three kids (gamer, video streamer, etc) AND two displays streaming HD content from Netflix. Then, we upgrade to their 400Mbit tier and bam - no behavior changes at home, yet, we somehow chew through 90% in 17 days. WTF? Xfinity can't show details on our usage because we don't have their equipment, and Netgear/Orbi doesn't support this critical feature in their high end mesh network product (RBR50 - AC3000) that covers 7500sqft and consistently great coverage/throughput. Anyone else seeing this? Please report this both to Netgear as a P1 feature request AND Xfinity/Comcast so they know there's an issue too.
Xfinity did send out notices in 2016 and 2017 that charge-per-gig was coming. Most people simply ignored it. Now they are enforcing it. So, that's why everyone is suddenly noticing this problem in the past several months.
Sure would be nice if anyone from Netgear would acknowledge this thread.
+1.
I will be taking the Orbi's offline and putting in my old router with DD-WRT and Yamon for a few days after being told I have used 82GB this month (today is the 2nd). I need to know which device is using this, out of the 50+ on my network.
I have looked everywhere for this feature too and in fact was in a rush, and didn't do enough research, then was recommended to purchase D7000 to be able to do this.
Very disapointed when I couldn't find that feature.
It's really essential nowadays, where we need to keep a tap on all usage in particular at work or home, where employees, guests, kids, servers and all sort of devices are connected with... all they can eat!
This is really important and I hope we can get this feature soon!
