Netgear integration speed test causes excessive data usage

[jonded]

The problem

Netgear integration appears to kick off a speedtest measurement on the netgear router every 30 minutes. On my connection, that appeared to use ~800MB of data over a very short period of time every 30 minutes. This would run ~48 times a day resulting in about 40GB of data usage per day, which would max out a Comcast Xfinity data cap of 1,200 GB over the course of 29 days. If speedtest measurement is active, a single measurement over the night would likely be better to limit data usage and provide indication of maximum bandwidth during a low load time window.

Example of speedtest throughput spikes and data usage accumulation:

What version of Home Assistant Core has the issue?

2022.12.9

What was the last working version of Home Assistant Core?

No response

What type of installation are you running?

Home Assistant OS

Integration causing the issue

Netgear

Link to integration documentation on our website

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/netgear/

Diagnostics information

No response

Example YAML snippet

No response

Anything in the logs that might be useful for us?

No response

Additional information

No response

[home-assistant[bot]]

Hey there @hacf-fr, @quentame, @starkillerog, mind taking a look at this issue as it has been labeled with an integration (netgear) you are listed as a code owner for? Thanks!

Code owner commands

Code owners of `netgear` can trigger bot actions by commenting: - `@home-assistant close` Closes the issue. - `@home-assistant rename Awesome new title` Change the title of the issue. - `@home-assistant reopen` Reopen the issue. - `@home-assistant unassign netgear` Removes the current integration label and assignees on the issue, add the integration domain after the command.

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[jonded]

After disabling the downlink bandwidth sensor, the periodic 30 minute data usage spikes appear to have terminated. Maybe this can be made as an optional input to specify the periodicity of the speedtest measurement, or a push button to refresh?

[starkillerOG]

@jonded you can disable the bandwidth sensors and indeed the speed tests will stopp occurring. You can also disable polling of the Netgear integration and update the entities through a automation at intervalls you like. HomeAssistant base rules will not allow update periods to be configurable.

[starkillerOG]

@MartinHjelmare The data usage of the speedtests of the Netgear integration @jonded points out may be a valid point. What would you recommand as default update intervall for speed tests? I currently have set 30 min.

[MartinHjelmare]

I'd set the interval to once a day. The speed test sensors are disabled by default, right?

[MartinHjelmare]

On the other hand, if you enable these sensors, maybe you want a higher frequency of the tests?

[starkillerOG]

@MartinHjelmare yes these speed test sensors are disabled by default. yea that was why I was asking, I am not using those sensors myself (althoug I did implement them).

I guess if you want to enable them, you want to track the network performance, personally if I would enable them I would like to see if there are diffrences between peak hours or not (many people home in your neigbourhood etc.). But wasting bandwith on speed tests is also why I disabled them personnally...

I really do not know what a good default value would be... Any advice?

[MartinHjelmare]

Maybe lower it to once per hour then?

[jonded]

@starkillerOG @MartinHjelmare Even with once an hour, it may be worth putting a caution into the documentation about data usage with those sensors enabled as it could still consume large amounts of data depending on connection speed. With kids that like to stream a lot of TV in 4K, I'm constantly having to monitor and be careful with my monthly data usage, so I'm really glad I personally noticed this in the first 24 hours after adding this integration and enabling the bandwidth sensors.

[starkillerOG]

@jonded I have increased the update period to 2 hours and added a note to the documentation in these two PRs: https://github.com/home-assistant/core/pull/85299 https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant.io/pull/25597

[kapciuch]

Same for me, testing speeds every 30 mintues. Added integration today. Would the fix update automatically or do I have to replace files by myself?

Thanks.

[starkillerOG]

@kapciuch The fix will update automatically when you update HomeAssistant. It will be included in HomeAssistant 2023.02

If you have issues, you can disable the 3 sensors ping, upload bandwidth and dowload bandwidth.

[issue-triage-workflows[bot]]

There hasn't been any activity on this issue recently. Due to the high number of incoming GitHub notifications, we have to clean some of the old issues, as many of them have already been resolved with the latest updates. Please make sure to update to the latest Home Assistant version and check if that solves the issue. Let us know if that works for you by adding a comment 👍 This issue has now been marked as stale and will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.