Data usage indication on Hub One

[#1]

I recently invested in the PlusNet Home Hone One so as to remove any reliance on the BT Openreach modem.

Having compared data usage statistics as indicated by the Hub and my PlusNet account, there appears to be a significant discrepancy in figures.

PlusNet Home Hub One:

This is going to amount to just over 21Gb for 3 full days

PlusNet Web portal:

Even at a worst case scenario of 2Gb per day this only works out at 6Gb for 3 days.

Immediate thoughts:

1. Either the Hub or the member portal is incorrect.  I would suspect the Hub.
2. I suspect that even though the hub page clearly states Internet Connection Configuration the page is in fact showing traffic not just from and to the WAN (Internet) connection but also potentially my local intra-LAN traffic.

If anyone would like to comment either to:

• offer an explanation for the difference in the reports.
• confirm if they get similar outcomes or are more correctly aligned.
• if this is in fact a known bug with the hub firmware and if so when it will be rectified?

[#2]

Interesting observation.

In my case, the Hub One number is slightly less than the recorded Usage, which is even harder to explain.

Connection time:	2 days, 00:44:55
Data Transmitted/Received:	244.7 MB / 6.1 GB

Let's call it 6.34 GB

I restarted the router around 9am Thursday morning so it doesn't quite line up with the 8am switch-over from off-peak to peak, but let's suppose that averages out. For the Usage I have (extracting the relevant parts of the table):

	Thu 13	Fri 14	Sat 15
Peak	2.58GB	2.98GB
Off-peak		509.99MB	597.1MB
Total		3.49GB	597.1MB

So that total would be 2.58+3.49+0.597 = 6.67GB which is slightly more but not hugely so.

I do notice some traffic coming down the line that gets dropped by the router firewall (the PlusNet firewall stops most unwanted packets from port scanners and so on but some TCP packets get through from over-zealous web sites) so if the router discounts that, it might account for the missing 0.33GB.

I don't have much LAN traffic, just the occasional print job to a WiFi-connected printer but that's down in the MB so it wouldn't really show up.

It fits with your theory that the router number includes LAN traffic, though.

[#3]

In my own set up I have a number of PC's/Laptops set up to talk to a Server which among other things runs WSUS for Microsoft updates.  Therefore the updates are downloaded from the internet to the server only once, but then pushed out over the LAN to each of the various devices, thus increasing network traffic overall while reducing it over the internet.  Microsoft have had quite a few large updates come out in the last few days. 

It will be interesting to see the results from others but perhaps to also re-evaluate my own outcomes over a few days while relatievly free of large MS updates.

[#4]

Just as an additional contribution on my LAN traffic, this also consists of incremental daily backup's from my various PC's/Laptops to a repository on the Server.

[#5]

Yes, that does all seem to fit. One way to tell for sure might be to disconnect the router from the internet for few minutes while you shovel a few GB around the LAN and see if the numbers in the router go up correspondingly by a few GB.

[#6]

The suggestion to disconnect my Internet and copy some files across my LAN is a good idea and I have now completed this test after waiting for a suitably quiet period.   I copied 7.6GB of music files and ran a backup to my Server during the test phase. The net result is that the count of data usage (although not indicated while disconnected) did not go up at all. 

The differential over the last 24 hours is not as much as previously seen; 5.3GB according tho the Hub while still under 2GB according to Plusnet.

I'm tempted to rely on the figures from the PlusNet portal as being more accurate.  I can't see this discussion achieving anything else now unless others wish to log their comparisons so as to see if there is a trend of inaccuracy.