Is Firewalla able to distinguish background traffic from actual user activity (gaming in particular)?

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Gary A

• June 04, 2025 16:22

So let's say we set a time limit for a User's computer gaming activity, but they leave the computer on when they are away from it. Some apps will generate background internet activity. Is Firewalla able to distinguish "real" User activity from this background traffic (noise)? Is there any way to "tune" this or adjust a threshold to make this work better? 

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  Firewalla

  • June 04, 2025 16:33

  It depends on the traffic and game. There are noise filtering, but may or may not work for everything. If you have a specific noise that you worry about, please let me know. 

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  Gary A

  • June 04, 2025 16:55

  Actually I am not on Firewalla yet but considering it. I currently use Qustodio which really sucks at that. I don't think it filters anything at all. I did a test with 30 minutes actual user activity followed by 30 minutes of hands-off the computer. Qustodio said the user was active for a full hour. AFAIK the only way to make this work would be to turn off the computer when not in use (not a great solution). Qustodio being a device-based app, disconnecting internet wouldn't even work. I'm looking for something that works better, or at least is more convenient. At least with Firewalla I could tell the kids to disconnect their internet connection when the machine is on but not in use.

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  Firewalla

  • June 04, 2025 20:34

  Firewalla activity control is per app ... since we treat each app differently, our accuracy is high; we don't have aggregation of categories yet. (gaming for example)

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  Gary A

  • June 04, 2025 22:24

  So for an app, Firewalla can distinguish between "real" user activity and background activity (noise)? At least some of it? It uses deep packet inspection and other techniques to do this?

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  Doyle Jack

  • June 06, 2025 00:20

  It does pretty good, but it's not perfect.

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