YAMon is such an amazing bandwith monitor.

[+Warwagon MVC]

There is a program that you can add to certain router firmware such as OpenWRT, DD-WRT, and a few others called YAMon, which lets you monitor bandwidth by device.

It really quite amazing and I've tried every other option out there hoping something would get close but nothing ever does. On PFsense, I tried BandwithHD, ntopng.

Bandwith HD was just ok as it would only give a daily total but wouldn't allow you to rename the devices.

ntopng was complete overkill and I could never really find the chart I wanted.

Upon a friend's recommendation, I installed "Untangle" and tried its plethora of charts, and ... meh, it was definitely the best of the alternatives I've tried but all I really want is exactly what is shown in the screenshot.

After installing it you are left with a plethora of "new Devices" with IP addresses and MAC addresses. This is a great time to go audit your network and find out what every device is, add it to a category, and give it a name.

I have Open-WRT x86 running on a 2nd Intel i3 computer plugged with a new Intel 4 port nc which at the moment is only connected to my guest network to test it out and make sure it works. I won't actually be installing it until I get home tomorrow or Sunday as I didn't want to leave for a few days with the reliability of a new router untested.

The Funny thing was, as I was auditing my guest network, (The guest network is an isolated 2.4 GHz network setup on my Ubiquiti AP made for IOT devices) there was 1 device I could not account for. It was using a sizable amount of data .. which was only 250 megs but that's a lot for a device that I couldn't account for.  While leaving home, I still couldn't account for the device. So I logged in to that router via a computer I left on when I left, and noticed "New device 14" The device I couldn't account for, was last seen online, at 11 am and hadn't come back online since.

I thought, well that tells me whatever it is, left the house with me. I suspected it was my iPhone connecting to the guest network, but when I checked the MAC address it didn't match. turns out I checked the previously connected network list on my phone and sure enough, for whatever reason it was periodically reconnecting to "Repair desk" and disconnecting. I had suspected it was an IOS device because when looking up the MAC address it didn't match any vendor, which made me think it was from "MAC address randomization" from an iOS device.

What's cool in that view, is you can see when a device is using the internet. For instance, the one labeled "Desk Lamp" is a smart outlet that just turns on my desk lamp. You can see it there was a brief connection blip at 2 am..and it was dormant most of the morning until I used it to turn on my light at 7 am.

"Adam's iPhone", which use to be called "New Device 34" (the one I couldn't account for), and I could see it was using bandwidth all morning, but when switching to the next page 12 pm and onward it used zero traffic.

It doesn't show minutes just hours, so all it tells me is that it briefly connected at some point between 11:00 am and 11:59 am, the same goes for each hour.

I just think it's nice to keep an eye on Bandwidth even though I have unlimited. If one day you check and your smart outlet is chugging 5GB of data, you know something is up.

Update

Got my router put into service and named most of my devices except for a couple .. and here is the story it tells.

[cork1958]

Looks pretty cool. Might just give it a try after I read up on it some more.

Thanks

[Wiggz]

I really need to move my R9000 to DD-WRT firmware.....the problem is it's working right now so I'm loathe to breathe on it let alone update the firmware.

[Mindovermaster Moderator]

On 12/05/2023 at 09:31, Wiggz said:

I really need to move my R9000 to DD-WRT firmware.....the problem is it's working right now so I'm loathe to breathe on it let alone update the firmware.

It may run, but nothing like what DD-WRT has to offer..

[Ravikant]

Amazing, how to get it?

[+Warwagon MVC]

On 18/07/2023 at 02:26, Ravikant said:

Amazing, how to get it?

You have to be running a compatible device and for that, you can find out what it supports on their website. Then you have to download the setup script and use WINCP to send it to your route. Then you use Putty to log into the router to run the script to install it. preferably I like to plug in a flash drive and install it to that. It's not the easiest thing to install if you're not technically inclined. If you are technically inclined it's not so bad.

[PNWDweller]

hmmm...maybe.  Currently on Freshtomato and like the firmware.  Have you ever looked into 'WatchyourLan' or "Pi.Alert"  Both will monitor your LAN and then at least Pi.Alert will let you know if there is a new device or not hanging around on your network. .

I do like the metrics provided for each device, that's pretty cool in the YAMON you brought up.   Pretty tempted. 

[+Warwagon MVC]

On 10/08/2023 at 12:23, PNWDweller said:

I do like the metrics provided for each device, that's pretty cool in the YAMON you brought up.   Pretty tempted. 

Ya, that's really the best part of it.