Trying to monitor bandwidth with Orbi RBR40

[daDozer]

Hey guys, I'm trying to find bandwidth monitoring options with the Orbi system. Preferrably, by device, but if that's not possible any kind of bandwidth monitoring will do. Can anyone show me where I can find this? Thanks!

[FURRYe38]

The only monitor is Traffic Meter. TM is only a over all bandwidth useage of the entire system. 

[BrianG_Simi]

I'm also looking for real-time bandwidth monitoring (or near real-time), particularly on the Internet port.

With my ISP, I have multiple levels of Internet service I can choose from, but with so many different devices, I don't really have a way of measuring real-time bandwidth for my entire network (IoT, mobile phones, gaming consoles, tables, computers, streaming devices, etc.) so I don't know if I ever exceed the 200Mbps down / 10Mbps up of the basic service...I can see aggregate, but not realtime.

It's $30 a month more for the higher server and I'd really like to know if it's worth it or a waste of money paying for something I don't actually use.

I see the /RST_statistic.htm link, but the Tx B/s and Rx B/s seem to be aggregate, not real-time. To test, I ran 6 concurrent HD streams on one computer and saw no obvious change in the Tx / Rx readings, although the Up Time and TxPkts/RxPkts did increment. (interval set at 5 seconds). Right now it's showing 5710 B/s (translates to about 45Kbps, which can't be my true network speed). I also tried a network speed test, which showed 361.4 Mbps, and then the Stats page shows 5708 B/s...actually went down, not up.

I have an old Asus RU-N66 monitor that I'm thinking of just putting in between my Orbi and my cable modem, but this feels "heavy" and I hate to add additional hardward just to monitor.

How hard would it be to add this to Orbi?

[Mstrbig]

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@BrianG_Simi wrote:

I'm also looking for real-time bandwidth monitoring (or near real-time), particularly on the Internet port.

With my ISP, I have multiple levels of Internet service I can choose from, but with so many different devices, I don't really have a way of measuring real-time bandwidth for my entire network (IoT, mobile phones, gaming consoles, tables, computers, streaming devices, etc.) so I don't know if I ever exceed the 200Mbps down / 10Mbps up of the basic service...I can see aggregate, but not realtime.

There are many bandwidth monitors to choose from, both free and for a fee.

200Mbps down / 10Mbps is referring to the amount of data you can send/receive at a determined amount of time. So the higher the bandwidth speed, the more data you can transmit at that determined amount of time. You never use up bandwidth. Your system just runs faster because you are able to send and/or receive more data. 

[BrianG_Simi]

Thanks for the reply. 🙂

I guess I'll download a few and see if I can monitor the WAN port of the Orbi; I've only had success with monitoring software when using a router that explicitly supports the software, and I haven't seen anything about the Orbi that indicates that it does support real-time monitoring on the WAN port. (For example, see the graph from my Asus RT-N66U, which I've temporarily placed between the WAN port on the Orbi and the cable modem)

My ISP charges about $70/mo for tier 1 Internet (say 200Mbps down, 10Mbps up max) and about $100/mo for tier 2 Internet (say 500Mbps down, 20Mbsp up max).

If I monitor a typical week and I see that I never go over 200Mbps down max or over 10Mbps up max, then I'm wasting $30 a month paying for the 500/20 plan when the 200/10 plan meets my needs. In the example below, I max out at around just over 19Mbps down (orange) and less that 1Mbps up (blue), so if that was a typical week, then I'd definitely be fine with tier 1.

[Mstrbig]

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@BrianG_Simi wrote:

Thanks for the reply. 🙂

If I monitor a typical week and I see that I never go over 200Mbps down max or over 10Mbps up max, then I'm wasting $30 a month paying for the 500/20 plan when the 200/10 plan meets my needs. In the example below, I max out at around just over 19Mbps down (orange) and less that 1Mbps up (blue), so if that was a typical week, then I'd definitely be fine with tier 1.

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Again you are confused how bandwidth works. You will never go over 200/10, because your ISP caps you from going over your paid for plan speed. You would have to increase your plan speed to see if your connection speeds go up. That still won't give you what you are looking for, as it is relative to how fast you want to download data. Think of a garden hose size determining the volume of water being delivered in a specific amount time. A 1 inch hose is going to deliver more volume of water, than a 1/2 inch hose in the same amount of time. So if a 4Gb UHD movie file downloads in 15 minutes at 200Mbps, it will download 2.5 times faster at 500Gbps. 

[BrianG_Simi]

I really appreciate the reply and I apologize if I'm not being clear and I'm sorry this is becoming a discussion on whether or not I need to measure vs. what options I might have to do so.

Does the Orbi have any internal monitoring (am I reading it wrong? can I derive the current speed from packets?) or support any external standards like SNMP or NetFlow that could be leveraged? Could a graphical tool like the one I have on my Asus router be added to the firmware in the Orbi or is the hardware limited? Is it there already, but just hidden / hard to find?

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As to the "why"...

I am on a promotion where I'm getting the higher 500/20 service for the 200/10 price. At the end of the promotion, I'm going to have to either drop down from 500/20 to 200/10 or pay an extra $30/mo. Therefore, my ISP is not going to throttle my service until I hit 500/20 (they offer up to 940), so I don't know what the impact of dropping down to 200/10 will be in practivce or whether I'm going to see any observable impacts on my useage (video buffering issues or lower resolution, wifi call dropouts, etc.) with that level of service unless I either monitor my useage or I drop it down and see the impact directly.

Based on our current useage, I want to know if we ever peak above 200/10, since, if we do, then dropping down from 500/20 to 200/10 will result in network bottlenecks, which could meaningfully impact the quality of online meetings, video streaming, the speed of online backups.

With working and schooling from home, as well having multiple video streaming services and mobile devices sharing wi-fi, I'd rather avoid experimenting with the lower level only to find that it actuall is a problem.

I've seen issues, for example, when I allow my online backup to use all of my upload bandwidth, and I've been using online services (AOL, Compuserve, BBS, etc.) since the days of 2400 baud and LANs since 10BASE2 (10 Mbps coax), so I've got plenty of experience exceeding the capacity of the pipeline and I'm willing to pay $20/month to avoid issues, but I'm not willing to pay $20/month extra if I won't know the difference.