4 ms·

I also monitor the bandwidth of each device on my network, and my numbers are much lower than his. The totals that I observed over the last 90 days: Device

I also monitor the bandwidth of each device on my network, and my numbers are much lower than his. The totals that I observed over the last 90 days: Device Download Upload =========== ========== ========= Echo Show A 5.487 GiB 1.451 GiB Echo Show B 4.343 GiB 1.293 GiB Echo A 0.778 GiB 0.739 GiB Echo Dot 0.626 GiB 0.580 GiB Echo B 0.132 GiB 0.291 GiB ----------- ---------- --------- Total 11.366 GiB 4.354 GiB Also note that both devices in the OP are called "echoshow", which means that they have a full LCD display that you could theoretically stream videos on (if you like watching videos on a 5" display with a terrible interface).

AnotherGoodName 1y ago
Fwiw i've had long running devices that just constantly ARP broadcast. Affects the local network only but if that's how you measure bandwidth you'll notice it. Ie. Non stop "Who has IP/MAC address XYZ? tell ABC" ARP requests, then a second device see's the request for XYZ (which may not even exist on the network anymore!) and realizes it too doesn't know who XYZ is, so it too sends it's own broadcast. And on the cycle goes as devices constantly see others requesting knowledge of XYZ and triggering the request in a cycle. Embedded devices are especially susceptible to doing this. You might not even notice, apart from a mild "my network feels slow" unless you inspect at network traffic closely. The worst part is these ARP storms basically require you to power down everything and power back up again. In the most classic engineer move the most effective way is to reboot the house. Ie. flip the switch at the fuse breaker and turn the house back on again. That turns all devices off and on again and causes what ever IP/MAC address confusion that triggered the storm to resolve. Worth investigating for OP. Especially for home networks with a lot of devices. Home routers won't stop a broadcast storm and once it's going they don't stop. Happens more often than is discussed in my experience (i think people just don't notice that poorly programmed devices can do these cyclic and endless ARP requests)
- chatmasta 1y ago
  I wouldn't trust flipping the fuse to the house because of thundering herd issues. When I restart my router I first disconnect all WiFi clients and unplug the Ethernet connections. Then I let it do its thing, download its mysterious updates, etc. Only when it's solidly online do I reconnect the clients one by one...
  - theoreticalmal 1y ago
    Do you have smart home devices? And how many user/interactive devices (phones, tables, laptops) do you have? Manually disconnecting and reconnecting WiFi clients would take me hours
    - chatmasta 1y ago
      I only use WiFi on my phone. Everything else is wired, including my laptop since it sits right next to the router and I’ve seen too much of the RF spectrum to rely on it unnecessarily…
- IIsi50MHz 1y ago
  > reboot the house […] flip the […] breaker My gran's power company doesn't like this. When I flipped the main breaker, they saw the load drop and scheduled a crew to investigate and repair[1]. We found out when they called to tell us off after they saw the load restored in few minutes. [1] It's an old house and hard to tell which outlets and lights are on which circuits, and which of the multiply-rewritten labels in the breaker panel are true, so the main breaker seemed the easiest way…
bazmattaz 1y ago
What tool do you use to track bandwidth usage on your network?
- x2tyfi 1y ago
  Also curious about this
  - bazmattaz 1y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45155796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45155796
- gucci-on-fleek 1y ago
  I run nlbw2collectd [0] on an OpenWRT router, and then scrape the data with a standard VictoriaMetrics/Grafana setup. It gives me really nice charts showing when each device is active and how much data it is using. [0]: https://github.com/mstojek/nlbw2collectd https://github.com/mstojek/nlbw2collectd
HPsquared 1y ago
Is that usage from doing video calls or streaming?
- gucci-on-fleek 1y ago
  No, I essentially only use it for announcements and turning on/off the lights (with some very occasional music streaming). The bandwidth usage appears to be mostly constant 24/7, so I'm not really sure why it's using so much data (but still much less than the OP).
diggan 1y ago
Are you also "never using them" like OP and they send/receive that much data? Curious what it is since the Sidewalk thing seems to be limited to 500MB across your account.
- gucci-on-fleek 1y ago
  I use them multiple times daily, but essentially only for things like "turn off the lights", "set a timer for 30 minutes", or "add cheese to my shopping list". But “Echo A” is probably my most-used device, so usage doesn't seem to be very correlated with the bandwidth consumed.
donatj 1y ago
Came here to say the same. We use our echos a fair bit but our data use is a fraction of that.

AnotherGoodName 1y ago

Fwiw i've had long running devices that just constantly ARP broadcast. Affects the local network only but if that's how you measure bandwidth you'll notice it. Ie. Non stop "Who has IP/MAC address XYZ? tell ABC" ARP requests, then a second device see's the request for XYZ (which may not even exist on the network anymore!) and realizes it too doesn't know who XYZ is, so it too sends it's own broadcast. And on the cycle goes as devices constantly see others requesting knowledge of XYZ and triggering the request in a cycle. Embedded devices are especially susceptible to doing this. You might not even notice, apart from a mild "my network feels slow" unless you inspect at network traffic closely. The worst part is these ARP storms basically require you to power down everything and power back up again. In the most classic engineer move the most effective way is to reboot the house. Ie. flip the switch at the fuse breaker and turn the house back on again. That turns all devices off and on again and causes what ever IP/MAC address confusion that triggered the storm to resolve. Worth investigating for OP. Especially for home networks with a lot of devices. Home routers won't stop a broadcast storm and once it's going they don't stop. Happens more often than is discussed in my experience (i think people just don't notice that poorly programmed devices can do these cyclic and endless ARP requests)

chatmasta 1y ago
I wouldn't trust flipping the fuse to the house because of thundering herd issues. When I restart my router I first disconnect all WiFi clients and unplug the Ethernet connections. Then I let it do its thing, download its mysterious updates, etc. Only when it's solidly online do I reconnect the clients one by one...
- theoreticalmal 1y ago
  Do you have smart home devices? And how many user/interactive devices (phones, tables, laptops) do you have? Manually disconnecting and reconnecting WiFi clients would take me hours
  - chatmasta 1y ago
    I only use WiFi on my phone. Everything else is wired, including my laptop since it sits right next to the router and I’ve seen too much of the RF spectrum to rely on it unnecessarily…
IIsi50MHz 1y ago
> reboot the house […] flip the […] breaker My gran's power company doesn't like this. When I flipped the main breaker, they saw the load drop and scheduled a crew to investigate and repair[1]. We found out when they called to tell us off after they saw the load restored in few minutes. [1] It's an old house and hard to tell which outlets and lights are on which circuits, and which of the multiply-rewritten labels in the breaker panel are true, so the main breaker seemed the easiest way…

bazmattaz 1y ago

What tool do you use to track bandwidth usage on your network?

x2tyfi 1y ago
Also curious about this
- bazmattaz 1y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45155796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45155796
gucci-on-fleek 1y ago
I run nlbw2collectd [0] on an OpenWRT router, and then scrape the data with a standard VictoriaMetrics/Grafana setup. It gives me really nice charts showing when each device is active and how much data it is using. [0]: https://github.com/mstojek/nlbw2collectd https://github.com/mstojek/nlbw2collectd

HPsquared 1y ago

Is that usage from doing video calls or streaming?

gucci-on-fleek 1y ago
No, I essentially only use it for announcements and turning on/off the lights (with some very occasional music streaming). The bandwidth usage appears to be mostly constant 24/7, so I'm not really sure why it's using so much data (but still much less than the OP).

diggan 1y ago

Are you also "never using them" like OP and they send/receive that much data? Curious what it is since the Sidewalk thing seems to be limited to 500MB across your account.

gucci-on-fleek 1y ago
I use them multiple times daily, but essentially only for things like "turn off the lights", "set a timer for 30 minutes", or "add cheese to my shopping list". But “Echo A” is probably my most-used device, so usage doesn't seem to be very correlated with the bandwidth consumed.

donatj 1y ago

Came here to say the same. We use our echos a fair bit but our data use is a fraction of that.