EE Signalbox

[mirdragon]

Never monitored the usage of the ee signalbox before (plus couldn't really do it on my router), but have noticed it uses approximately 500mb a day just for communicating with EE servers. This is without actually using it to make calls...

[gribz_uk]

Says it's no longer available to purchase, maybe this is the reason why?

[alexatkin]

That does seem mighty excessive.

My Fonera did a HUGE 7MB down, 5.1MB up total over the whole of last MONTH.

I can understand the SignalBox needing to use more as its a more persistent connection, but not THAT MUCH more.

[mirdragon]

I understood it shouldn't use more than 500mb a month according to EE, but it seems to be constantly streaming to them unless this is a bug with smoothwall

[Chalky]

I had my Three Signal Box connected directly to a port on my Mikrotik and whilst I can't remember exactly how much bandwidth it was using but I don't think it was anywhere near 500MB a day! I've got 4G at the house now (which has improved the 3G for voice calls) so haven't had it plugged in for a while.

If I can remember where it is I'll stick it in a see how much bandwidth it uses.

[mirdragon]

Code:

Traffic address statistics - Sat May 30 13:12:00 2015:
Address         Period          Direction       Current rate    Hour            Day             Week            Month
192.168.1.101   Current         In              21.6 kbits/s    2.5 MB          123.7 MB        260.4 MB        260.4 MB
                                Out             8.4 kbits/s     968.0 kB        56.6 MB         126.0 MB        126.0 MB
                Previous        In                              8.3 MB          133.7 MB        0.0 kB          0.0 kB
                                Out                             3.1 MB          68.2 MB         0.0 kB          0.0 kB

Code:

Traffic address statistics - Sat May 30 13:31:00 2015:
Address         Period          Direction       Current rate    Hour            Day             Week            Month
192.168.1.101   Current         In              18.8 kbits/s    5.3 MB          126.4 MB        263.1 MB        263.1 MB
                                Out             7.7 kbits/s     2.1 MB          57.8 MB         127.1 MB        127.1 MB
                Previous        In                              8.3 MB          133.7 MB        0.0 kB          0.0 kB
                                Out                             3.1 MB          68.2 MB         0.0 kB          0.0 kB

This is what is now currently reporting - the unit has only been connect for less than 24 hours properly (due to EE and having to reset it) - I've also resinstalled and reconfigured smoothwall (but not sure if the bandwidth usage is reporting correctly) due to the usage being reported, so will see how this progresses. But according to EE the signalbox should only use 500mb a month. We can't use their Wifi calling as none of our phones are EE phones (all ours unlocked and sim-free (iphone6, iphone4s and Nexus 6 which was purchased on a contract but sim-free)

I would have loved to have used Sophos UTM but a lot of features are not active for home users which are available in smoothwall. pfsense had issue with constantly dropping the connection (not sure if set it correctly) and didn't like the way it reported stuff. A simple config also screwed it up.

But smoothwall seems to be very stable, it's just the usage i'm looking at

Without the device we get poor service at home (if stuck in attic) and on most occasions no signal

update: current usage

Code:

Traffic address statistics - Sat May 30 17:09:00 2015:
Address         Period          Direction       Current rate    Hour            Day             Week            Month
192.168.1.101   Current         In              21.5 kbits/s    1.8 MB          158.0 MB        294.7 MB        294.7 MB
                                Out             8.1 kbits/s     669.0 kB        70.0 MB         139.4 MB        139.4 MB
                Previous        In                              8.5 MB          133.7 MB        0.0 kB          0.0 kB
                                Out                             3.3 MB          68.2 MB         0.0 kB          0.0 kB

[alexatkin]

Well that sucks, O2 WiFi calling works on any phone and PC.

As for router software, that's why I used OpenWRT. It seemed the easiest to setup for moderately complicated configurations. The alternatives looked over-complicated or inflexible when I looked.

Its annoying though, I would like to get 64bit running on it just to see if it makes any difference but I think the stock builds needs a SATA device to boot and I don't fancy having to recompile a build myself, every time there is an update.

[mirdragon]

Smoothwall is very easy to setup compared to some of the others - Sophos UTM has the best interface across any of them, but you only get certain parts in the home version and there is no Upnp available so you have to manually configure all the rules for devices. I tried some testing to see on how the rules work, but it just wouldn't let me add 'any' for external connection

EE have done wifi calling, but only if you purchase a locked down bloated phone from them (and then only certain phones) - O2 is expensive and not available in a lot of places we visit and thus reason we use EE - did think about going with Three as they now have their WiFi calling app but I found they CS to be as bad as EE. When I had one of the numbers on Virgin we even found that had issues while the EE numbers never (and Virgin along with Three both use EE)

[mirdragon]

Some screen grabs taken from my smoothwall setup

[alexatkin]

Darn it, we have kind of gone off-topic on both recent threads.

Maybe you should create a Smoothwall thread and I will pfSense if I decide to go ahead with the change?