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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
Well... I switched to Plume and am very happy with that. Between the instability of the Orbi (it got better, but still) and not having this capability and a number of UI issues a different product felt like a better path for me personally. I hope Netgear will figure this all out...
I just bought Orbi RBK50 and unfortunately noticed there is no way to see device specific data usage.
I don't understand why Netgear doesn't reply anything to this thread. I think I will just return the devices and order Ubiquiti.
another vote for this feature
Came to Orbi from Google WiFi because of dropouts but the lack of this function could be a deal breaker.
I manage multiple Orbi devices for clients. The fact that such a basic feature is missing for troubleshooting (ex: what device is going rogue?) is baffling. I’ll be moving my clients to the alternatives that offer this. I will save tons of time and heartache.
I have the same gripe. Come on netgear... I paid hundreds of dollars for this device. Unacceptable.
I need this, but for a different reason. I only have 5Mb up and 1 Mb down. A "hog" can effectively bring down my entire connection making everyone's connection unusable. I need to see if there are rogue devices on my network. (I keep around 18 devices connected at all times with my family of 4.) Working from home I need to be able to see the culprite a quash the traffic post haste.
I'd like to see the monitoring include a list of unique IP addresses accessed over a time interval by each device. I think this is very basic info that is easy to get. I was surprised it was not included in any log.
I think throttling can be very difficult to implement, but I'd like to at least know what devices in my home are communicating with what external sites. Next step might be to measure the amount of traffic between any device and any external IP address. The last, and in my opinion the most difficult step, is to implement metering.
If I can get the IP addresses I can visit the sites and decide the next steps. Those might be:
- block
- disconnect the source in my home if I think it's been hacked or is otherwise sending unauthorized info.
- discuss with my kids what they're seeing.
- take my kids' device away
Add me to the list of users that need this basic functionaity. As we add more and more IoT devices to our homes, we have to have this info!
Agree bandwidth monitring is a much requested feature. For those withi limited BW I need t know which device is pulling downj an ms update or steam content. Not all of us have 100 Mbps connections. This would be extemenly useful when the one i s
find one device impa cng BW for all other devices. I suspect however his will fall on deaf ears once again and must continue to run pcap on a span port in order to detemine streams. Users have been asking for this for years.