<< Solved >> Suggestions for determining home network bandwidth usage over time?

[nottooshabby]

We are starting to get close to our monthly data cap for our home internet service which is 1.2TB! I am a little surprised as we don't watch a lot of movies or stream a lot of TV shows. A year ago we were using about 500GB a month, and for many possible reasons, we are now using close to 1TB. I want to see, if for example, of the 1TB how much is YouTube, One Drive, Zoom, Hulu, or is it some IOT device going crazy, etc.? Ideally, if I find some bandwidth hog, I can narrow in on the specific device so I need to see the data for all the devices on our network. It looks like some routers have this kind of capability(I still use Airport Extemes) so one option may be buying a newer router. Another options may be some kind of software that runs 24/7 and analyzes all the packets on the network. I am trying to do this for relatively low cost, and I hope very quickly I will narrow in on the culprit if there is one.

Any suggestions?

 

[Feartech]

We are starting get close to our monthly data cap for our home internet service which is 1.2TB! I am a little surprised as we don't watch a lot of movies or stream a lot of TV shows. A year ago we were using about 500GB a month, and for many possible reasons, we are now using close to 1TB. I want to see, if for example, of the 1TB how much is YouTube, One Drive, Zoom, Hulu, or is it some IOT device going crazy, etc.? Ideally, if I find some bandwidth hog, I can narrow in on the specific device so I need to see the data for all the devices on our network. It looks like some routers have this kind of capability(I still use Airport Extemes) so one option may be buying a newer router. Another options may be some kind of software that runs 24/7 and analyzes all the packets on the network. I am trying to do this for relatively low cost, and I hope very quickly I will narrow in on the culprit if there is one.

Any suggestions?

something like:
https://www.glasswire.com/ ?

 

[nottooshabby]

something like:
https://www.glasswire.com/ ?

I looked at glasswire, but from the description, it sounds like it just tracks the data usage on the specific PC it is installed on. I need something that will track all the devices in our house, iPhones, Rokus, Apple TV, etc.

From the description, " Please keep in mind that GlassWire only keeps track of bandwidth for the computer and server it's installed on and not total bandwidth usage on your network."

It does tell you what other devices are on your network, but doesn't track their bandwidth usage.

 

[andrelabbe]

hi

No easy answer I am afraid.

If you have a let say 'dedicated FW' (HW/SW solution) between your internet connection and your 'estate' network then no problem you can get any reports you want about anything.

If you have a router which will act as 'Router, FW, WiFi' then milleage might vary from nothing to whatever via CLI.
I am in the UK.
My old routers had CLI with powerful set of commands. You could get pretty much what you wanted.
Now my BTHubs... not much and only via 'GitHub' random projects

you could use 3rd party Apps 'to act like a FW' in short a kind of Web filtering/ FW as software solution.
Some are Linux based running on any cheap old PC with 2 networks Cards.

 

[FLP]

I use an Asus RT-AC68U router. It has a very powerful traffic analyzer. It allows you to see traffic by device, or application. You can look at daily, weekly, and monthly periods. Traffic in, out, or both. There is also a realtime traffic analyzer. I think it would easily allow you to figure out what is going on on your network.

Asus also will give you an free DDNS url that will allow you to use the builtin OpenVPN sever so you can vpn in from offsite and securely browse the internet or access your home network. It has worked flawlessly for me.

An example of the traffic statistics is shown below.

You can find a refurb unit for $50 to $80 or new ones for about $122 new on Amazon. If you buy one make sure it is not a T-Mobile branded one as the firmware on it has not been updated in years. The Asus one is still current and has regular firmware feature and security updates.

Frank

 

[nottooshabby]

I use an Asus RT-AC68U router. It has a very powerful traffic analyzer. It allows you to see traffic by device, or application. You can look at daily, weekly, and monthly periods. Traffic in, out, or both. There is also a realtime traffic analyzer. I think it would easily allow you to figure out what is going on on your network.

Asus also will give you an free DDNS url that will allow you to use the builtin OpenVPN sever so you can vpn in from offsite and securely browse the internet or access your home network. It has worked flawlessly for me.

An example of the traffic statistics is shown below.

You can find a refurb unit for $50 to $80 or new ones for about $122 new on Amazon. If you buy one make sure it is not a T-Mobile branded one as the firmware on it has not been updated in years. The Asus one is still current and has regular firmware feature and security updates.

Frank

View attachment 506905

Thanks Frank for posting this. I did stumble on the Asus traffic analyzer yesterday after reading about much more complicated approaches using the Ubiquiti Edge router X. I think the Asus solution looks perfect.

Would the AC-1200 do the same sort of traffic analysis? It's one of the Asus wifi 6 routers.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-wireless-ax3000-dual-band-wi-fi-router-black/6377908.p?skuId=6377908

 

[FLP]

I personally don’t know. The manual online for the AC1200 shows about the same about traffic monitoring (not too much) as the RT-AC68U manual. Doesn’t show the statistics tab in both manuals, so maybe the firmware is the same. Is the AC1200 much cheaper?

Frank

 

[FLP]

My son has the RT-ACRH12 (I think it is also called the AC1200) but is using it only as an ethernet access point. He bought a couple of RT-AC68U’s since he wanted to set up AI mesh and get better coverage in his yard. The RT-ACRH12 does not have AI Mesh. He does think he remembers seeing the traffic statistic tab. Since the router is currently setup as an access point, the WAN port is not used and thus the Traffic pick is missing on the interface.

Frank

 

[nottooshabby]

I ended up getting one of the Asus routers, RTAX-86U, with WIFI 6. We have quite a few devices that support 802.11AX, so it was a nice upgrade.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-rtax86u-dual-band-wifi-6-gaming-router-802-11ax-mobile-game-mode-free-internet-security-mesh-wifi-support-black/6443999.p?skuId=6443999

It does provide good detail as to what is hogging our data.

Now I am trying to figure out why iCloud is uploading gigabytes of data when we don't even use it for iCloud backup. I have turned everything off but Keychain and Find My iPhone and it's still uploading 500+ MB of data a day on some of our devices..

 

[nottooshabby]

Wow, after watching this for the last week, our devices upload an insane amount of data. We don't even use iCloud for backing up our devices. I have also gone into all our devices and turned off every analytic option I could find that may be sending data to apple.

This is what I observed using a program called Debookee to watch my the data usage coming out of my daughter's m1 MacBook Air. This is in about 20 minutes it uploads a few hundred megabytes to apple.dsn.net, and iCloud.com.

I think this is pretty ridiculous. I have basically resorted to signing out of iCloud just to get this under control. I filed a bug report with apple. We shall see what they say.