I’ve been getting repeated emails from my ISP about “exceeding my bandwidth cap” and they feel very incorrect.

My current router is a Cisco RV260, and it doesn’t have a great way of tracking traffic. (There’s a port traffic screen that does give tx/rx bytes, but no way to see any date ranges).

Is there anything out there that can give an accurate account of Internet traffic? It would be nice if I could see destination domain/IPs, just for kicks and giggles, but an overall traffic count is all I really need.

Thanks!

  • Naate@beehaw.orgOPEnglish
    2·
    2 years ago

    I feel like it’s just me, but all of my devices with Open/DDWRT crap out after a couple years. Even well-reviewed prosumer-grade gear ends up becoming wildly unreliable in an unacceptably short amount of time. I had to double-check, and my order history puts me at a new router every 2-3 years. This “business class” RV260 will be hitting 2 years in the fall, and I’m already experiencing wonky behavior where it needs to be rebooted regularly. Maybe it’s just an unspoken truth that anything below true “enterprise tier” kit requires a weekly reboot. I should just put it on an outlet to cycle the power every Sunday at 2am or something…

    That said, I do love DDWRT!

    • TheOtherJake@beehaw.orgEnglish
      2·
      2 years ago

      Hey, I thought of mentioning, but got sidetracked and forgot. Most of the dozen or so consumer grade routers I have hacked around with seem to have less than optimal placement of DC stepdown converters located around the processor and radio circuit blocks. I mean, they appear to be optimised for radio as the primary design constraint, not for what is best for the DC converter operation. They tend to place electrolytic capacitors in close proximity to circuit blocks that get quite warm. I can’t say how often capacitors are creating problems, but it would not surprise me if this is the cause of many issues for many people after a year or two. I can say that I had problems with a cable company provided modem a few years ago. It had an obvious leaky cap and several that were around 25% out of spec, along with a couple identical parts that were around 5% out as I would expect with my typical shelf stock. Replacing all of them fixed the modem.

      • Naate@beehaw.orgOPEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        This is actually a great theory. I’ve fixed several monitors and TVs that were just bad capacitors. It’s a logical conclusion with these, too.