Feature Request: Bandwidth Monitor

Mgreer316 Based on the complexity described by the lead dev, I'd rather them do it correctly while maintaining stability.

txgunlover I use to be a software developer many moons ago. So I can appreciate the complexities of development. However, it's been over 2 years. In that time they've released a plethora of other things that are nice, but are NOWHERE near as important as this. This should be now, and should've been months ago priority #1. There is nothing more important than this. People need to know where their data leaks are so they can avoid being hit with extra charges and fees. Other suppliers are doing it and price wise, eero is at the upper end of the spectrum. This is not an unrealistic expectation. It's now become a very basic need as we're flying blind without it.

It's a feature that's been available for decades, so all they have to do is find a way to implement it within their environment.

Mgreer316 Software development for over 20 years here... you'd be surprised how inaccurate most of these "other supplies" monitors are... I recommend discussing with the eero developer who has addressed why it's difficult in depth on Reddit.

Mgreer316 I am in need of this feature as much as most of the posters on this thread but my research has show this feature not to be as 'stock' as I expected. The only hardware vendors that have such a feature stock are Asus and Google Wifi. Even Ubuquiti and Mikrotik do not. Plume lets you monitor network usage for wireless devices but not wired. They are working on including the wired network usage in their product as well. All this makes me believe that though this sounds like a straightforward feature to add, it really is not.

I feel the pain of not having this feature in Eero either but we have to believe that Eero is doing the best it can to include such functionality in the near future. For me, the race is on between Plume and Eero. Whichever of these two gets this done is who I stick with. If Plume is the first one to implement it, I will look at switching over to them at that time. Till then, I am hoping Eero beats them to the punch.

txgunlover I made a typo. It should've read "other suppliers". That said, is the task impossible? No, it is not. Complex? I have no doubt. Difficult? Probably. But those things are irrelevant. You have a business because you are solving another's problem(s). The complex difficulties of solving those problems is irrelevant to the customer. If I'm going to part ways with my money. all I want to know is are you solving my problem? If you do, you get rewarded. If you can't but somebody else can, they get rewarded. Complexities and difficulties are what make business viable! Else, who would need to buy what you're selling?

The eero system has been magnificent for me. It's been reliable, stable, and fast. But there is a growing problem with the enforcement of data caps. In my case, I'm probably going to stay with eero for the reasons I mentioned, but use one of my retired Asus routers to get traffic monitoring and operate the eero mesh in bridge mode. This is obviously a workaround and I will not have access to some of eero's features, but it's worth it to me to gain traffic monitoring. Then hopefully one day I'll wake up and discover a new update has been pushed and I can monitor traffic! 

fistfullofbeer It doesn't surprise me that only a few vendors support it now as it's not something that concerned most of us until the last 18-24 months or so. We all have lived with data caps on our phones, but who would've thought we'd have enforced data caps on our bottomless broadband access? Once streaming became more mainstream and the ISPs started to charge extra fees, then the importance of such a feature skyrocketed.Today this should be standard fare for any new router products hitting the market. There's simply no excuse to not have it.

DealMasterMike They've commented multiple times that it is a very difficult feature to implement accurately, thus why most offerings from other vendors are inaccurate.  They are working on it according to their comments, but that it is very difficult to do so.

andrewf00  Very well put.  Perfection not needed, but something is.

andrewf00 Totally agree, just need to figure out what is using a lot of data so I can address it.

carter I agree, we have Xfinity and we keep hitting even that data cap. I'd really like to see this feature - not sure why this forum is so old yet there's still no feature for it

Jason As much as I hate to say it, it seems that Google Wifi has improved and is getting similar reviews to Eero at 1/2 the price and no annual subscription.  It has this feature and has had it for some time now.  I'm considering giving it a try.

carter yeah I wanted Google WiFi when we were getting our house but the best buy dude convinced my mom that eero was better :/

Jason eero is better. I came from Google wifi which at first was good until I had to reboot almost on a daily basis. 

Yes eero is missing this very important feature but I'm not going back to Google wifi. 

olsonware not sure if that's true - at least I've not seen the feature anywhere

Jason I found it online - I don't think it is precise enough to add value for me.  Search for Xfinity Gateway  -- good in concept though

olsonware oh yeah we had the gateway and it sucked I highly recommend you do not buy it - it's a router/modem and is like absolutely garbage

Jason I did a ton of research.  Ended up getting Plume.  Found the devices that are taking up bandwidth.  In addition, the mesh network part went from about 60-80 mbps to over 200 mbps throughout the house.  

johnrellis  Just one quick suggestion. I had the same problem when I first "cut the cable", and it turned out to be pretty simple. Streaming boxes, like the Roku for example, will continue to stream after you press the power button on the remote. That power button just turns off the TV. If you turned off the TV while the Roku or other streaming box was still in streaming mode, it will continue to do that. I had a couple of nights where the Roku used over 30GB. streaming...and that was enough. So I went back to a router that I had used previously, put LEDE firmware on it that provides per-client traffic data, and was able to find this problem.

Couple of ways of dealing with this:

1. Press the "Home" button on the remote before you press the power button. This stops any current streaming. This can be a problem with kids or elderly people (like me :-).

2. Use one of those master/slave power strips, where the TV is plugged into the master outlet, and your streaming box is plugged into a slave (called "power-saving" outlet, sometimes). Then a few seconds after you turn off your TV with the streaming box remote, your streaming box will be turned off. The obvious problem with this is that you have to wait for your streaming box to boot up when you want to use it. But this is the way that we have our guest room Roku set up, since we don't want to have to be telling guests to "press the Home button before you turn the thing off" all the time :-).

Oh, one more thing, if this is your problem, the new version of the Roku firmware, 9.2, has a sleep timer that you can enable that will essentially turn off the Roku after 4 hours of non-use. Not as good of a solution as NVIDIA Shield "sleep" timeout of 5 or 20 minutes, but a step in the right direction.

RT I did!  Get service.  They have responded to my pre-sales questions, post-sale on what my experience is.   I found the 2 devices that are taking up bandwidth (AppleTV is the biggest one).  In addition, I went from 60-80 mbps mesh network to over 200 mbps throughout the house.  Very happy with the switch and they are responsive!  

Moses Agreed. I just now read through this thread of OVER TWO YEARS after noticing the regression. Hard to believe that useful bandwidth features have been discussed for so long and the most recent action was to remove much of the minimal functionality that was in place. Disappointing. 

BeanDip I don't understand why your post is in this thread? This is a feature request that should be in its own thread. This thread is about a serious issue that their target market needs implemented. A feature that other competitive solutions offer. 

MrDoh Yes but...there should a 'prosumer' class. The Netgear ecosystem isn't bad, with some of the ProSafe models.The Eero should at least consider making it more manageable.