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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
I also need this because of Comcast 1TB data limits. With my Gig download speed it would only take a few hours to hit the limit at full advertised speed...luckily I never get close to getting my advertised speed...
Congrats Comcast on arbitrarily creating this data limit and feature need...if I had any other realistic ISP options, I'd just move on...
I will say, if you're willing to cough up $50 more per month, you can get unlimited data from Comcast, but you'd need to routinely go over 1274GB/month to make that "worth it"...
My Orbi's are for sale, going over to a TP Link Router and running Gargoyle firmware with monitoring buiilt in.
- Did you sell your Orbi? Found a better solution?
+1 for the per device monitoring feature.
To my friends netgear, This is no longer good to have feature on a premium router like Orbi. Competitors are giving a very rich set of features and user experience that devalues the solid device that you are providing. With the demand on bandwidth increasing (& sadly salaries not increasing as fast :-D ) it is crucial that SOHO Network administrators have these tools available to ensure an efficient use of the money they spend on bandwidth.
So chop chop! Get back to making the magic happen! :-D
+10
This is a required feature. I’m considering switching back to a Synology router even though it isn’t mesh, which lets you monitor per device traffic and can watch it in real time from the mobile app.
Why would this NOT be a feature?
One more big family which is being raped by Comcast for DOUBLE the monthly bill since they turned on 1TB limit (which is crap btw way that they can sell you unlimited and then just CHANGE the terms of a contract. NEXT STOP, my Attorney General complaints on cconsumer protection!) They have a monopoly and for Netgear to sit back and not provide this feature that helps keep them in check is insane. I have now paid two months of 400 bills (usually 200) so....apparently the Orbi has become a money maker for comcast. Is there collusion ? I sure hope not, but it seems that with Netgear's lack of a timely solution on this, which is costing people REAL MONEY, it sure seems like it!
+1
This really should be a standard feature. I have the Orbi AC3000 version and I expected that this was in there. I guess I didn't read far enough. Starting to regret not going with the Google version...
This really is a must have. We had a device uploading way to much data (a smart camera that wigged out it looks like), but because of the non-existant tools on Orbi it's incredibly hard to diagnose these problems. We only noticed because we were nearing our comcast cap, and I can only assume what the actual problem was because there is no detailed information.
I love orbi's wifi, but the management is a joke. I'm thinking about putting a cheap OpenWRT router between the modem and the Orbi, and putting the Orbi just in AP mode, until Netgear can get their act together on this one.
Either build in proper monitoring (I can't even see current bandwidth rates anywhere!) or at least enable build SNMP for more advanced users.
