Traffic analyzer shows data used when not home

[Lee MacMillan]

I was looking at the traffic analyzer data today on a monthly view. We were gone the first 11 days of April and yet the traffic analyzer shows traffic on pretty much every device we own, including iPhones and tablets that weren't even in the house. The Roku showed zero traffic for a couple days but the most days showed typical Roku traffic which is 5-13GB. I always leave the Roku on the home screen so it's not like it could be been accidentally streaming something. Just wondering how this is possible. Is this feature not very reliable?

 

[Deleted member 84281]

No none of it is reliable. It's all marketing hype to sell more routers. Cheap home routers such as Asus and others are meant for one thing ROUTING. Anything other than that is a crap shoot. Just look at 90% of the threads here, there all mostly people running add ons and trying to make a cheap router do what it can not and never will. Stick with the minimum that works and leave it that way.

 

[Viktor Jaep]

No none of it is reliable. It's all marketing hype to sell more routers. Cheap home routers such as Asus and others are meant for one thing ROUTING. Anything other than that is a crap shoot. Just look at 90% of the threads here, there all mostly people running add ons and trying to make a cheap router do what it can not and never will. Stick with the minimum that works and leave it that way.

Thanks for the vote of confidence, @J23

 

[Viktor Jaep]

I was looking at the traffic analyzer data today on a monthly view. We were gone the first 11 days of April and yet the traffic analyzer shows traffic on pretty much every device we own, including iPhones and tablets that weren't even in the house. The Roku showed zero traffic for a couple days but the most days showed typical Roku traffic which is 5-13GB. I always leave the Roku on the home screen so it's not like it could be been accidentally streaming something. Just wondering how this is possible. Is this feature not very reliable?

Definitely weird about the iphones/tablets... I don't use Roku, but perhaps it's caching content based on your preferences or saved shows? Who knows... That's when you break out tcpdump and find out what's really going on. You could probably emulate this by just turning off wifi on your iphones/tablets, and seeing what's happening while you're local?

 

[Deleted member 84281]

Thanks for the vote of confidence, @J23

Nothing personal.

 

[Viktor Jaep]

Nothing personal.

Of course not... tell us how you really feel?

 

[Viktor Jaep]

Welcome back, btw. I'm sure @Tech9 is happy for that too.

 

[Tech9]

I'm afraid to say @J23 is right. Fighting with Asus router issues as we speak.

Resetting Asus router remotely question

Looks like a friend of mine got hit by some firmware update anomalies, but I can't get there in person to see what's going on. The system is RT-AC68U router with radios turned off and 2x EAP225 access points with auto assigned by DHCP IP. The access points are wired directly to the router and...

www.snbforums.com

I managed to fix mine already and exploring the options to fix another. Both in remote locations. If no one knows the answer to my question I'm going to experiment first on my AX86U and go from there. This is really frustrating and folks with Asus routers are furious, everywhere. I'm replacing the only Asus router I have in use this summer when I get to it. The GL-MT2500A device I purchased recently for experiments is perfect for my VPN server needs.

 

[Viktor Jaep]

I'm afraid to say @J23 is right. Fighting with Asus router issues as we speak.

Resetting Asus router remotely question

Looks like a friend of mine got hit by some firmware update anomalies, but I can't get there in person to see what's going on. The system is RT-AC68U router with radios turned off and 2x EAP225 access points with auto assigned by DHCP IP. The access points are wired directly to the router and...

www.snbforums.com

I managed to fix mine already and exploring the options to fix another. Both in remote locations. If no one knows the answer to my question I'm going to experiment first on my AX86U and go from there. This is really frustrating and folks with Asus routers are furious, everywhere. I'm replacing the only Asus router I have in use this summer when I get to it. The GL-MT2500A device I purchased recently for experiments is perfect for my VPN server needs.

Sucks... sorry @Tech9 ...

 

[Tech9]

I'm just trying to help a friend at the moment. Hoping my VPN server won't auto update and go to sleep again.

 

[drinkingbird]

I was looking at the traffic analyzer data today on a monthly view. We were gone the first 11 days of April and yet the traffic analyzer shows traffic on pretty much every device we own, including iPhones and tablets that weren't even in the house. The Roku showed zero traffic for a couple days but the most days showed typical Roku traffic which is 5-13GB. I always leave the Roku on the home screen so it's not like it could be been accidentally streaming something. Just wondering how this is possible. Is this feature not very reliable?

The roku is of 0 surprise, all these devices, even if just sitting on the home screen, will use data, and in some cases apps can cache shows you like to watch during off peak hours (saves them bandwidth and cost). I'm sure if you looked through that you'd be able to find a reason for that.

How much traffic were the other devices showing? It could have just been traffic that was counted slightly off (happened before you left, either some internal process is a few hours off time zone wise or it doesn't compile the stats until a bit later). Or are you sure you didn't even use it for 1 hour the first day of the month, or they didn't all do all their pending updates as soon as you got home but before looking at the stats etc?

I've never tried to analyze those stats to see how exact or accurate they are but mine always show expected devices using reasonable amounts of bandwidth based on what device it is. There are some glitches, I think in some cases LAN traffic gets counted when it shouldn't (may have been fixed).

There is also the possibility that it just counted traffic from some other device under the iphone or tablet, maybe the IP changed or it got confused by randomized MAC addresses etc.

Or maybe your Roku was attempting to reach those devices constantly (they do that), enough to make them show a bit of traffic in the stats (not sure how much they were showing, that would only cause a pretty small amount).

 

[AntonK]

Thanks for the vote of confidence, @J23

Hahahaha

 

[Lee MacMillan]

I was looking at the traffic analyzer data today on a monthly view. We were gone the first 11 days of April and yet the traffic analyzer shows traffic on pretty much every device we own, including iPhones and tablets that weren't even in the house. The Roku showed zero traffic for a couple days but the most days showed typical Roku traffic which is 5-13GB. I always leave the Roku on the home screen so it's not like it could be been accidentally streaming something. Just wondering how this is possible. Is this feature not very reliable?

Mea culpa. I was reading the graph incorrectly which I realized this morning when I was looking at it again. If I look at the traffic on the daily (instead of monthly) setting, it clearly shows nothing happening while we are sleeping. So there was no activity when we were away. Sorry for wasting so much bandwidth!

 

[Deleted member 84281]

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Welcome back, btw. I'm sure @Tech9 is happy for that too.