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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
After getting no response from Netgear on the Orbi for years, I switched to Ubiquiti and have been really happy. It is a much bigger process to step into and it involves more money, but it offers all of the easy maintenance and observability that I wanted and more.
I don't have time to read all the pages of comments on this thread. But consider me absolutely shocked that my Netgear nighthawk router cannot do this already. I went with nighthawk because of the brand reputation of simply being one of the best, this is unbelievable! Before too long. I'll probably be in the market for a new router to take advantage of technology improvements; and believe me, if netgear can't figure out something this simple they are not even on my list as an option.
I've already written off Tplink about 5 years ago due to lack of support and not honoring their warranty for a known defective item (simply because I bought the item on sale... When they saw my receipt, they said I didn't pay the 'minimum' needed to get support!) So my list up vendors who actually will get my $ is shrinking. If Netgear can't add this, my confidence in them is shrinking.... Why have an overall traffic meter and not tell me which device is using the most.... Basic, basic functionality.
Anyone have advice on a good company to replace my Nighthawk? Looking for one that can easily handle the myriad of devices in a modern smart home environment.
Facing data limit challenges with Comcast is tough, especially in a connected household. Requesting Netgear to provide more comprehensive data usage options, like per-device statistics or external metering, seems like a reasonable plea for a smoother experience. Here's hoping for a solution that suits your needs!
Is there any update on this? Costlier routers like RAXE500 does not have this feature. Please add this as a feature in upcoming FW releases. This is one of the most essential feature customers would be looking in to considering the amount of devices connected in home/office now a days.
Thanks for the tip! Hadn't heard of Google Nest WiFi Pro. Mesh WiFi too I see, and cheaper than Orbi! And smaller form factor. Nice. Will check it out.
Goodbye Netgear,
I replaced with Google Nest wifi pro for better software, performance and data on devices with device usage graphs.
the old router is in the dog house.
I hear you brother, I guess most of us in this thread feel the same.
Just throwing my rage into the void here. Clearly they're not paying attention. This is a basic feature. Next time I get a router system (won't be for a long time because this damn system cost $1500), it absolutely will not be from NetGear.
Netgear, just found this post and greatly disappointed, with lack of home network tools (none!). I just started to use a Nighthawk-C7100V router and the 'Traffic Meter' section is very poor, with the sad Traffic Status graph (tells me nothing). As these folks mentions above, I have a ISP that has data caps. I have one of your 16 port data switched and two 8 port switches with lots CAT5 on 10-15 devices. I was looking for tools to tie all of these devices together and help me find the bandwidth hogs and data risks/firmware (my kids got Xbox, and kids use WIFI iPhone Netflix streaming). I expected to be showered with free Netgear home network/tracking tools, ported over from your commercial network clients (for free!) . I bought the Netgear name for the above points (keep all same brand), but you folks are greatly lacking. I was looking for sniffer and Wireshark kind of network tools AND data risk identification alerts to be captured and the IP/device level. Running these open source tools on a PC, take up a whole device. What if I a install a NAS on my network, there are no tools.
Still no? Orbi and Netgear really sucks
