Ubiquiti Traffic Monitoring Solution

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Jul 20, 2008
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I want to go with a Ubiquiti router setup but they don’t seem to do long term traffic counting.

I have a bandwidth cap and want to keep track of my month to month bandwidth.

I do this easily now with my Nighthawk router. Any cheap and easy add on solutions for this?
 
Based off - https://hardforum.com/threads/r7000-vs-r8000.1966402/#post-1043789381 you've purchased the ubiquiti access point right?

Just an FYI, access points are not routers. So you cannot replace the nighthawk with it directly. The Access point will connect to your router, and you'd disable any wireless capabilities of your router. In which case you could still monitor bandwidth through your router

Yes, I do realize that but I would like to ditch the Nighthawk and go with the Edgerouter or USG for the routing. The Nighthawk is on its last leg.

I was on the swift boat to Unifi networking until I came across this omission in functionality......
 
Yes, I do realize that but I would like to ditch the Nighthawk and go with the Edgerouter or USG for the routing. The Nighthawk is on its last leg.

I was on the swift boat to Unifi networking until I came across this omission in functionality......
Maybe this will help? https://community.ubnt.com/t5/EdgeRouter/DarkStatsCore-My-bandwidth-monitoring-solution/td-p/2107748

Edit: just came across this one too https://community.ubnt.com/t5/EdgeRouter/My-bandwidth-monitoring-solution/td-p/1255655
Edit 2: reading further on this thread, it may or may not be possible to it this way still. Read it carefully just to be sure you aren't disappointed if you were planning to go this route. This is in reference to the link in my first edit only
 
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I just setup a Ubiquiti network at my house.... could not be happier.. the unifi software seems to monitor a good amount and you can get the cloud key $80 piece that continues to log info. I setup a pair of AC HD Access points and I am getting 1.3gbps connection speeds.. I did see my PC say it bumped up to 1.5gbps but I have not seen that in the unifi software.
 
If you use the Ubiquiti USG and unifi controller (or cloud key) you can turn on DPI and get that information here's an example of what mine looks like you can reset the counter whenever you want:

CcAxuj7.png
 
I have a USG, I like the info it provides. I did not like setting it up.

The deployment is really wonky if you need to change the IP scheme from the default subnet.
 
If you use the Ubiquiti USG and unifi controller (or cloud key) you can turn on DPI and get that information here's an example of what mine looks like you can reset the counter whenever you want:

View attachment 98022

Do you need the USG to see that traffic? A shame.. I talked to a bunch of network guys who told me they rarely recommend the USG over the EdgeRouter X or the newer one they came out with that does 1gb (internet) better than the X.
 
Yes I think you would need the USG to see that info. It is stored in the controller.

Thanks for showing those charts. I would just have to manually reset it at the first of the month since it doesn’t seem that you can filter based on time. It puts the USG solution for me at almost $200 because I need a cloud key for running the controller 24/7.

The EdgeRouter which is much cheaper at $50 has some traffic monitoring but it isn’t persistent and seems to only collect a rolling 30 minute sample:

https://community.ubnt.com/t5/EdgeRouter/Traffic-monitor-details-and-reporting/td-p/2195743
 
If you have a computer that runs 24/7 (ie file, media, or backup server) you could run it on that.
Thats what I do personally rather than pay for a cloudkey, they do have a cloud offering too but its pretty pricey (like $300 a year)

I was willing to pay the capital costs up front though to get the full suite for the single pane monitoring capability USG + Switch + AP.
 
If you have a computer that runs 24/7 (ie file, media, or backup server) you could run it on that.
Thats what I do personally rather than pay for a cloudkey, they do have a cloud offering too but its pretty pricey (like $300 a year)

I was willing to pay the capital costs up front though to get the full suite for the single pane monitoring capability USG + Switch + AP.
surprising to me how many [H]'ers don't have a simple little VM hypervisor set up to care for little networking needs, i could never see myself buying a cloudkey when i could carve out like 512 or 1024MB of RAM on a little linux or esxi hypervisor for a debian VM to run the unifi controller...

same is true for the OP, if you have a little system set up like this you can throw an Observium VM on there or something and get some really cool monitoring forwarding out of the edgerouter because it supports that kind of stuff... i suppose if you're looking for ease of setup, that's not the route you'd go though...

this is the pitfalls of using biz grade gear in the consumer or pro-sumer space...
 
surprising to me how many [H]'ers don't have a simple little VM hypervisor set up to care for little networking needs, i could never see myself buying a cloudkey when i could carve out like 512 or 1024MB of RAM on a little linux or esxi hypervisor for a debian VM to run the unifi controller...

same is true for the OP, if you have a little system set up like this you can throw an Observium VM on there or something and get some really cool monitoring forwarding out of the edgerouter because it supports that kind of stuff... i suppose if you're looking for ease of setup, that's not the route you'd go though...

this is the pitfalls of using biz grade gear in the consumer or pro-sumer space...
Yep, I have a ubuntu vm running on my fileserver allocated 2 cpu and 4gb ram with docker running the unifi controller/ubiquiti dvr apps for my cameras.
 
You could also send your Ubiquiti logs to ELK and then you can determine how long you want to keep that log information. Of course that would require setting up and configuring ELK, but it is open source and can be configured to provide the information you are looking for.
 
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