Netsentry doesn't catch all traffic

[GoogleCodeExporter]

It's more like a question than a bug report, but my provider's statistics 
differ from netsentry's.  It happens in steps, and now, they are approx. 15MB 
apart (42 vs. 57).  Is my provider defrauding me, or is it possible that some 
traffic cannot be seen by netsentry?

Original issue reported on code.google.com by torsten....@gmail.com on 18 Dec 2010 at 12:28

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Hi Torsten

First off, thanks for using NetSentry!

I can think of several possible reasons for this difference in accounting:

1. Your provider might reset their traffic counter on day other than the first 
of the month (default behavior of NetSentry). In doing so your provider and 
NetSentry are very likely to not end up with the same results. You could ask 
your provider when they reset their counters?
2. In order to save battery NetSentry is not constantly running. It checks the 
phone internal counters on a regular basis. The interval for these checks can 
be set in the settings page of NetSentry. You could try and set the update 
interval to 1 minute and see if this helps.

I hope this helps!
Best regards,
Lorenz

Original comment by Lorenz.F...@gmail.com on 20 Dec 2010 at 7:50

• Changed state: Started
• Added labels: Type-Other
• Removed labels: Type-Defect

[GoogleCodeExporter]

1. I don't know how the provider calculates internally but the displayed 
traffic is reset on the first of the month.
2. Okay, I'll try this. So Android itself is actually counting the bytes? But 
it shouldn't drop bytes either, should it?

Thank you very much for your explanations!

Original comment by torsten....@gmail.com on 20 Dec 2010 at 8:50

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Android is based on Linux and Linux does count the bytes that are sent over 
network interfaces. NetSentry basically just reads out this information 
periodically and stores that data in an internal database ;-)

Technical info:
However, these internal counters (of Android) are reset whenever the interface 
goes down. This can happen if you turn off your phone, if you turn off your 
networking devices manually (flight mode for example), or when the phone 
switches from 3G to WiFi or vice versa. Unfortunately there is no way of 
getting a notification (programmatically) before this happens (at least this 
was the case when I last checked). You can only sign up for notifications that 
are sent out after such events have already occurred. Of course this means that 
by that time the internal counters have already been reset. Because I did not 
want to have a service running constantly (in order to save battery) I chose to 
only periodically check the counter values. By default the interval is 5 
minutes, which should provide a reasonable accuracy/battery-drain trade-off. 
Since the main purpose of NetSentry is to guard you from expensive bills while 
only having a minimal effect on your day-to-day usage, I traded a little bit of 
inaccuracy for more battery life. However 15MB seems to be quite a big hit. 

I don't know if other traffic monitoring deliver more accurate information that 
NetSentry. You might also want to try out other monitoring applications and 
compare their results with the ones of your provider and/or NetSentry. I'd be 
very interested in the results of such a comparison, so please keep me posted 
;-)

Original comment by Lorenz.F...@gmail.com on 20 Dec 2010 at 9:13

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Okay, this explains it.  I've indeed had many occasions when the interface was 
switched/switched off.  I'll just increase the sample frequency then.  Battery 
is not an issue for me.  Thanks again!

Original comment by torsten....@gmail.com on 20 Dec 2010 at 9:32

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Even with 1 minute update interval, I have a significant drift between the 
values of my carrier and Netsentry:

——————————————————————————��
�————————
Date       T-Mobile       Netsentry
——————————————————————————��
�————————
2.2.         0,1            1,76
5.2.        11,94          10,44
6.2.        15,34          12,14
11.2.       36,64          30,04
13.2.       46,80          36,72
——————————————————————————��
�————————

I still can and will use Netsentry for short-term determination of traffic 
(e.g. "How many MB have I consumed during this long car ride?") but I cannot 
use it for controlling monthly traffic I'm afraid.

Original comment by torsten....@gmail.com on 13 Feb 2011 at 10:25

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Thank's for your time investigating this!

This really looks like NetSentry is constantly missing traffic. It also looks 
like T-Mobile resets their counters at a different day as you do with NetSentry 
(the first measurement is higher on NetSentry). 

I do know that NetSentry is working quite accurately for other users from 
reading the comments. However, I don't know what phones/carriers they're using.

Now, if you want to investigate this further you could try and install another 
traffic monitoring software. If you click your way through starting from the 
"Related Apps" section on 
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.googlecode.netsentry you should be 
able to find some :-)

I'm sorry for not being able to help you any better :-(

Original comment by Lorenz.F...@gmail.com on 14 Feb 2011 at 9:35

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Could netsentry have an option to trigger polling on use of dns resolver? 
Dnsmasq magic of some kind?

Original comment by Chaotic...@yopmail.com on 19 Sep 2011 at 3:26