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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
Especially if you are going to have a web interface to the router, let us see and control other things.
So, I’m done with Orbi… or at least Netgear’s lack of support to address the reporting deficiency.
Whose solution did you purchase when you kicked Orbi to the curb? Obviously given this thread, it must be a high-quality mesh solution that allows reporting on individual devices. Thanks!
Eero. Very happy with the speed, functionality, UI, and reporting features.
I discovered within a week that my son's XBox was downloading at 100 gigs every few nights in app updates. He didn't believe me. Off went XBox data.
A week later we looked at the data graph again. Wow-data use dramatically lower!
I asked him to troubleshoot the specific reason so much data was being used. He figured it out himself. Xbox data turned back on. All good.
Watch Amazon for the best deals. I got the Eero 6+ system, 3-pack for $194 (normally $299).
Such a no brainer feature. Over on xfinity and don't know what's eating data.
Xfinity for me too. 1.2TB is a LOT of data in a month, and with no help from Netgear I couldn’t figure it out. I ended up loading up WireShark on my fastest macbook pro and “listened” to the WiFi on and off for a few days to find the nodes with the biggest bandwidth utilization, talking to off-network addresses. Nothing really stood out as the ultimate culprit, but at least I learned a few things. I also ended up buying a q-linx LanProbe network tap and a thunderbolt gig-e adapter to do the same for hardwired devices.
I should mention, I have over 80 devices with individual IP addresses on my network. And I never found the smoking gun device, probably because I didn’t commit my laptop to 24-hour service for the entire month.
No less, anyone with hours and hours to wrestle through the detailed documentation and hardware gadgeteering could do load up WireShark (it’s free) and buy a LanProbe (it’s not at all free), and figure things out for themselves. Or, Netgear could update their code to simply click off a counter as each byte came through from each connected IP address, and present that counter to the administrator when they turn on the “individual bandwidth monitoring” option. Very little processor required, just a little memory and a little code. Ignore broadcast, add an option to view external conversations. No, I don’t know the Orbit code base but after 30+ years in the software industry, I can assure you it’s not that hard.
How about it guys?
Still no? Orbi and Netgear really sucks
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.
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.
I hear you brother, I guess most of us in this thread feel the same.
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.
