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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
While I like Orbi, it is this sheer avoidance to create feature competitive functionality within Netgear that I am moving away from them as I replace equipment.
Yes, really need this feature to be able to monitor data/bandwidth usage by device connected to router. Am using a Netgear Nighthawk MR60.
I logged in to find out how to track our usage. We are not big users and pay for 1000mb a month. We have always stayed around 800mb, but since Jan, we have started to get notices that we are approaching our limit. We are not doing anything different. They charged us $30 extra last month, and it's about to happen again. I want to know where this extra usage is coming from. I see that this post started back in 2018. I can't believe Netgear has not changed anything in 2 years-shameful! I wish I had seen this post before we dropped our Xfinity router for our Nighthawk AC3600.
I just got an Orbi Pro SRK60 . WHile I have been experiencing some issues with WiFi. I was also interested in monitoring the bandwith to help troubleshoot usage. What a dissappointment not to find this.
I just returned another router which Iwas not powerful enough, yet this function WAS available there.
I wonder if there are altnernatives, or external software that can monitor this?
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Not that I believe there is any chance at all that Netgear actually cares about their customers... But I'm adding my +1 here - just in case. We need this feature Netgear. When I consistently have less than 300mbps of my 1 Gig fiber connection, I'd like a way to figure out where the bandwidth hog is. Not having an option to see which device(s) are using it all up is infuriating.
+1 for per device logging. also would be good to be able to bandwidth limit per device.
For all of us that have this years-old thread set up for notifications, sorry...this is not to say the feature is available but rather to ask the following...
In the absence of this feature, does anyone have any recommendations on how to do this even if it's temporary? While I have a lot of devices on my Orbi network (60+) I have a suspicion that I have a device or two that are going rouge with their downloads. On a "normal" day we are averaging 40GB/day (and that's without a bunch of streaming). Right now the kids and wife are at school and I'm home working. The Orbi bandwidth monitor says I'm at 6.3GB already today over the course of 10 hours when either everyone was sleeping and/or hardly anyone was home. I'm really trying to nail down what's gobbling up 6GB of bandwidth during these "off hours." I was trying to use Xfinity's monitor but it's not real-time.
Side note, I have zero complaints on my Orbi AX6000 system. I've got great coverage/speeds and am running 5 satellites (3 of which have ethernet backhaul).
Right now I'm deciding between two paths.
- Do the toggle on/toggle off approach. With 60+ devices this seems a bit daunting but I have everything I need to do it.
- Buy a new router that supports bandwidth by device monitoring, put the Orbi in AP mode, monitor bandwidth for a few days, then return it. A lot of hassle but an easy/clear answer.
Just curious if anyone out there had any other suggestions before heading down these paths (or even specific router recommendations). Thanks all.
Replace your ISP router with a homemade pfsense router. you can install a plug-in to monitor all devices on the network.
I have been using my orbi for years, and waiting for this feature like everyone else.
clearly netgear is not implementing this. I will be looking at a new mesh router system to replace orbi when these things kick the bucket. Not buying netgear products again if they don't listen to their customers. And I won't be recommending these to my friends again.
I'm not denying these seem to work well and are reliable, so i suspect replacing wont happen for another year or two, but having to use pfsense or some mirrored port traffic graph solution is obsurd when the router is only using 7% cpu and 3gb of 4gb flash and 205 of 500 memory usage.
I'd rather not do custom solutions for something that my old WRT54G did with custom firmware 10+ years ago.
This is insane to completely and continually ignore your own customers.. the very people who are responsible for your success. We asked for something and you've incredibly refused to help us for over FOUR YEARS now. This is NOT a "Gee this would be kinda cool if we could see how much data our devices are using." With more and more internet providers enforcing data caps, it is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY to know the data usage for every device that flows through our routers.When we are notified we are going to have our internet cut off, throttled, or penalized, it is obviously some device we are unaware of, a hijacking neighbor, or a device that, unlike a pc or phone, can't show it's usage. We are unable to resolve the issue or we wouldn't be asking you year after year for the necessary tool.