Discussing the removal of 'View My Broadband Usage' for customers on un-metered products

[#1]

Unfortunately, even a router includes internal traffic so that PC-PC traffic (backups) is included with the internet traffic.

So no useful statistics will be available.

[#2]

a router includes internal traffic so that PC-PC traffic (backups) is included with the internet traffic

Not on mine - it measures traffic on each interface separately. In fact I can (and do) measure traffic on each individual interface and device whether connected via WiFi or ethernet, whatever switch or access point they are connected to. So although the recorded traffic for a particular device will include all traffic, the stats for the ADSL or 4G interface do not include any internal traffic at all.

[#3]

Here's an entertaining example of how the usage stats isn't quite right anyway...

	Mon 17	Tue 18	Wed 19	Thu 20	Fri 21	Sat 22	Sun 23	Total
Peak	124.89GB	0KB	-	-	-	-	-	124.89GB
Off-peak	506.17MB	109.56GB	-	-	-	-	-	110.07GB
Total	125.4GB	109.56GB	-	-	-	-	-	234.96GB

So according to the stats, today I've downloaded 109GB in 8 hours - on an ADSL2+ connection that is synced at 13.8Mbps. The data I'm downloading is highly pre-compressed, so there's no scope for compression during the download.

By my calculation 13Mbps is going to max out at under 6GB an hour, so 48GB in 8 hours is the most that could be expected.

The data I've actually downloaded since yesterday totals a little over 80GB so far and some of that was over 4G so isn't included here (should be finished by the weekend...)

[#4]

Wow, so my previous stats can't have been quite up to date - here's the latest

Current billing period: Jun 17 2019 - Jul 16 2019

	Mon 17	Tue 18	Wed 19	Thu 20	Fri 21	Sat 22	Sun 23	Total
Peak	124.89GB	0KB	-	-	-	-	-	124.89GB
Off-peak	506.17MB	152.96GB	-	-	-	-	-	153.47GB
Total	125.4GB	152.96GB	-	-	-	-	-	278.36GB

I wish my connection really was fast enough to download  153GB in 8 hours!

[#5]

@corringham Mine are so far out I haven't bothered looking for about 3 months - much more accurate data from independent third-party programs.

[#6]

Has the broadband usage been disabled now? My stats were way out for the first two days of the last week, and zero since.

Mon 17	Tue 18	Wed 19	Thu 20	Fri 21	Sat 22	Sun 23	Total
Peak	124.89GB	87.27GB	0KB	0KB	0KB	0KB	0KB	212.17GB
Off-peak	506.17MB	174.63GB	706.18MB	0KB	0KB	0KB	0KB	175.84GB
Total	125.4GB	261.9GB	706.18MB	0KB	0KB	0KB	0KB	388GB

I won't miss the feature myself as it wasn't accurate anyway. 

[#7]

Mine was the same but appears to have come back to life since Thursday (so was offline for a week). I am not convinced they are accurate at all though as sometimes VMBU can read high and others low. Given the inaccuracies, I personally feel it better to not have it at all.

[#8]

You are quite right - it is back. And it has filled in the missing days - the figures are still way out though. I wish my connection was fast enough to achieve those download figures!

[#9]

Apologies if this has been dealt with elswhere - I've gone back a few screens and can't find anything in this forum. Mods - redirect if appropriate..

From 6th August people on unlimited products will no longer be able to see their usage. (Actually, it appears to have gone from the member centre home page already but can still be found via the help pages and direct links.) Is this OK with everyone?

Sure, we're not concerned about going over the limit, and we've been warned for a while that usage is no longer accurate because Plusnet can't for some reason track streaming protocols. However, I reckon there's still some value in being able to see our usage - e.g. spotting unusual spikes that might indicate a compromised local network.

What do you think?

[#10]

Some routers, I must confess I don't know about Plusnet freebies as I use a Smarthub 6, which has this feature,  log the up/down data against each connected device, which is far more useful. 

I doubt that many people are interested in inaccurate composite data.

[#11]

Hi @grahamt thanks for your post. While there are other ways to track your usage, internally we can still see the daily or hourly usage of a connection in raw figures using the CBC Usage tool mentioned Here earlier in this thread.

We can use this tool to assist with the diagnosis of any faults or technical issues. If you have a genuine reason for seeing the usage like that example, feel free to let me know and I'll be happy to generate a copy into a bar chart.

I hope this helps.

[#12]

unifi networking equipment logs near enough everything. i dont even know how far back these are for. (web file transfer is sky q)

[#13]

The Unifi Security Gateway can be configured to keep logs for as long as you want (and have space for), and/or can be transferred to another location. There's lots and lots of detail available. Probably overkill for most people, but I'd recommend Ubiquiti equipment for anyone that needs a corporate level set-up. 

[#14]

So many protocols make use of https (including most web sites) that it seems doubtful that it is possible to give a sensible breakdown of the type of traffic anymore.

[#15]

I just want to know what my average usage is per week... and the total( average ) per month...

so ... what "third party" FREE software is there available on the internet to download.

I`m not concerned with the actual bits and bytes count... just a very basic usage chart/grid/graph whatever of my  general surfing, and video from sites, like you tube vimeo etc and downloads.