If you have a monthly data cap from your ISP or you're experiencing network congestion, Firewalla can help! You can use the following features to track your bandwidth usage to avoid overage charges and better understand your network.
- Live Throughput
- Data Usage
- Monthly Data Plan & Alarm
- Large Bandwidth Usage Alarm
- Large Upload Alarm
- Firewalla Data Usage Management Explained
Disclaimers:
- Firewalla measures your bandwidth usage, excluding IP (Internet Protocol) and MAC headers. Your service provider may include these headers in their measurements.
- There are certain long-lasting flows (TCP connections that never terminate) that Firewalla only accounts for when the session is terminated. Your service provider may measure differently.
- Firewalla will only measure devices that have monitoring turned on.
- Traffic related to some Firewalla features is not counted in Data Usage. See the full list here.
Live Throughput
If your app is connected to Firewalla's local network, you can view your real-time data usage from the Live Throughput chart on your box's main page. Live Throughput charts are also available for each of your networks and devices on their individual detail page. If you have a dual-WAN configuration, you'll see two charts showing throughput on each WAN separately.
Note: If you are using an iOS device and can't see the Live Throughput chart when connected to your local network, make sure local network access for the Firewalla app is turned on:
- On your iOS device's home screen (iOS 14 or later), tap Settings. Privacy -> Local network.
- Turn on local network access for the Firewalla app.
Data Usage
If you want to look into past data usage, scroll to the bottom of your box's main page, tap More, then tap the Data Usage feature.
This feature will show you monthly and daily data usage charts. You can tap on each chart to drill down, so you can trace back and compare your current data consumption to previous months.
If you have the Monthly Data Plan feature enabled, your monthly data usage will be calculated based on the reset date of your data plan.
Monthly Data Plan & Alarm
If you have a monthly data cap from your ISP, you can enable Firewalla's Monthly Data Plan feature to help you track your data usage. Toggle it on from the Data Usage page and fill in your data plan and reset date accordingly.
- Data Usage Plan - Your data usage limit or threshold, based on your monthly data plan
- Reset Date - When to start a new data usage cycle
In general, it is good practice to set your data usage limit 20% lower than your ISP limit– for example, if you have a 1T limit from your ISP, set your data usage limit to 800GB. Always use your ISP's measurements as the standard.
After your Monthly Data Plan is enabled, you will find a new widget on your Box's main screen. It shows you how much data has been used in your current usage cycle, and how many days are left in the cycle. You can tap on the panel to go to the Data Usage page directly.
Monthly Data Plan Alarm
Once you set up the Monthly Data Plan feature, Firewalla will automatically send you alarms when your data usage exceeds 80%, 90%, and 100% of the threshold to avoid overage. For example, if your network has consumed 148.16 GB during your usage cycle and your data plan is set to 100 GB, Firewalla will generate an alarm.
To opt out of receiving alarms, tap Alarms from your box's main page, then tap the Alarm Settings icon in the top right corner. Scroll down and tap on Monthly Data Plan to change the alarm settings.
Large Bandwidth Usage Alarm
Left Netflix or Youtube running? Firewalla can notify you when a device has consumed a large amount of bandwidth over a short period of time. This can help you identify devices or activities that are draining bandwidth and take action. This type of alarm is on by default, but it can be turned off in Alarm Settings. Large Bandwidth Usage alarms will show:
- Device - Which device is causing the alarm
- Data Transferred - The volume of data transferred on the device in the last 24 hours
- Top Destinations - The top 5 destinations receiving the most data transfer volume
Finding Large Bandwidth Devices
If you want to know which devices are consuming the most amount of bandwidth, or which destinations your devices have been uploading data to, the Firewalla app can show you insights.
Tap the Network Flows of any device, group, or network. The app will show you a list of top destinations and flows sorted by data downloaded and uploaded. You can specify the time range. Tap on any device or destination to drill down and see details. If you find any suspicious connections, just tap Block to stop it directly.
You can find which device consumed the most data in the past 24 hours from the Devices list by tapping on the sort button in the top right, then sorting by Top Download or Top Upload.
Large Upload Alarm
Firewalla's Large Upload alarms can also help you identify uploads over a certain data threshold. Unlike the Abnormal Upload alarm, Large Upload alarms simply look into the connection between your devices and the external host. If the data uploaded exceeds the threshold you've set, Firewalla will generate an alarm.
This type of alarm is turned off by default. If you want to get notified when such activity happens, go to Alarms -> Alarm Settings -> Large Upload, and change the general setting to "Send Both Alarm & Notification". The default Upload threshold is 100 MB, but you can tap to change it.
Traffic Not Counted in Data Usage
- [VPN Server] All VPN traffic sent to the Firewalla VPN server to access internal devices.
- [VPN Server] All VPN traffic sent to the Firewalla VPN server to access the Internet (only partially counted).
- [VPN Mesh] All VPN traffic sent to the Firewalla VPN Mesh network to access the Internet or any internal devices.
- [Speedtest] All traffic generated by Firewalla Internet Speed Test.
- [Docker] All traffic used by dockers installed on Firewalla.
Firewalla Data Usage Measurement Explained
Measurements from Firewalla are taken by the data size in each packet, excluding IP and MAC headers. Your ISP will likely measure the whole packet size, which means that your ISP's measurements may be larger than Firewalla's. To account for this, reduce your data limit in the Firewalla app by a percentage.
In the example below, Comcast reports Internet usage as 922 GB, while Firewalla reports 836.04 GB. In this case, the ISP measures 10% more than Firewalla.
Comments
16 comments
In the latest version of Firewalla Gold’s firmware you cannot unmute the alert to configure a threshold. Any advice?
@Tommy,
The issue is fixed in the upcoming Testflight version 1.37 (49).
Please update the iOS App, and give it another try.
Is there a way to set a data usage limit per device per month? Not just the overall monthly plan limit.
@Ramon,
Sorry, we don't support data usage limit per device for now. The monthly data plan is designed for people who has a data limit imposed by ISP, to prevent the unexpected charges.
May I know why would you want this feature to be per device?
I have kids that usually spend a ridiculous amount of time streaming youtube videos, netflix content, etc, using most of my monthly data plan. If I’m able to either do traffic shaping and limit bandwidth/resolution for youtube, netflix, amazon prime, etc, or set a data cap per device (TVs mainly, but also PCs and tablets), I could be able to optimize my data usage at home and have enough for me, since now I’m working from home after COVID-19 and have to join multiple video calls everyday.
With COVID-19 I’m now having kids being schooled online, and a home office. Both mean my data usage is going up, and this might be for good, so I need ways to optimize my data usage and avoid exceeding the limit.
Is there something firewalla can do? Or a recommendation you might have? Open to suggestions. Thanks
@ Ramon,
Thanks for the detailed story. I'm afraid we don't have any data limit functions available now, will add it to our to-do list.
However, what we do have, is a set of flexible rules that allows you to fine-tune what sites a device can assess, and when it can access them. In your case, I'd suggest you block your kids' devices internet connection while allowing them to access learning sites required by the school, and schedule some allow rules for Youtube, Netflix, etc, for a certain amount of time per day.
Here is our guide on rules, and the "allow" feature is currently available to the early access user, will be officially published in several weeks: https://help.firewalla.com/hc/en-us/articles/360008521833-Manage-Rules
Hope this is helpful.
I would like to add another vote for per device bandwidth shaping/control. I am in a remote area where my only option for internet service is wireless. We have an Apple TV for all of our media access but this device alone can eat up 700+ GB per month. We've had threatening letters from our provider that we have to reduce our usage or be cut off.
Having the ability to set daily/weekly/monthly usage caps per device would be a tremendous help. No all streaming media takes up the same amount of data usage. Different providers (Disney +, Netfilx, etc) have very different usage needs, HD vs non HD, etc so it's hard to know when usage is getting high on a given day unless I monitor it all the time which is the opposite of what technology should be doing for me.
The Firewalla Gold is an amazing device, keep up the great work!
Per device shaping will be in 1.971. Please sign up here to join the early access mode, which you can play with it. https://help.firewalla.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360046872134-Early-Access-Onboarding
Any plans to have bandwidth usage/alerts by Wan connection? My issue is that I have two Wan connections setup; my primary does not have data caps and my backup does. My Primary however is not as stable due to it being cellular and it sometimes has issues based on where I live in the sticks so the backup kicks in regularly. Unfortunately I don’t see a way to track usage directly through Firewalla by WAN connection (only combined) unless I’m missing something.
I'm hitting data caps with my ISP and was looking to purchase this device to help keep us on track.
I mean it's nice to get an alert that I'm about to hit my data cap but honestly my ISP already tells me that. What I'm needing is a way to look at the past months data and determine if the cause is from streaming, steam updates, and or windows updates. Then if needed I could easily block steam updates and or limit Netflix until the following month.
I'm to the point I'm looking to setup something to cache steam and or windows updates.
So I have firewalla Red, the data bandwidth I am seeing is only in the kbs/second. I have a lot of computers in the house and cameras and I am currently watching youtube. There is no way the bandwidth is in the low kbs. Is this a bug?
@Bruce,
How about the network flows in the main screen? does it look normal, having large amount of upload/download?
Youtube doesn't download data all the time, it will download and buffer.
Thanks,
When I first got my blue+ over a year ago my data usage pretty much matched what my ISP said. After a few months though the blue+ has consistently reported noticeably MORE than the ISP. What could be causing this? Is it reporting intranet traffic as well?
+1 for the per device cap.
My firewalla is on 1.9751 but I can't find a way to set this up. I'm like Ramon, my kids are killing my datacap and no amount of negociating/reasoning is helping... Tiktok/twitch and so on are so addictive...
Is there a way to show monthly data usage on a per WAN basis as well as combined? I have two ISPs. one wired and the other wireless. I'm using a Firewall Gold with the Firewalla Wi-Fi SD.
It would be useful to see a breakdown of aggregate data usage as total data uploaded and total data downloaded.
I have enabled Data Usage monitoring on my Firewalla. At this point in the month, 5 days before my plan resets my Firewalla is reporting that I have used 900+GB of data. However, my ISP reports that I have used ~600GB of data.
I suspect that my ISP is only tracking download usage but the Firewalla is tracking upload and download usage.
Viewing the upload and download usage separately would help make the data make more sense. If my assumption that my ISP only counts download usage, then a natural Firewall enhancement would be to monitor and alert on data usage as:
* download usage alert
* upload usage alert
* total (up and down) usage alert
Please sign in to leave a comment.