topic Re: Highly Data Usage in Arlo Ultra

Seeing substantial increase in internet data causing overages with Xfinity 1.2 TB limit?

Retired_Member — Thu, 01 Apr 2021 17:00:01 GMT

I have had my Arlo cameras (3 ultra 2 and a wired doorbell) installed for a couple months now. I’m seeing substantial increases in my internet data usage causing overages with Xfinitys 1.2 TB limit. I have reduced the video quality and the motion sensitivity of the cameras I suspect are the issue (2 cameras that my dogs can trigger when they are outside), but I’m still seeing a lot of data usage. No other changes have occurred on my network since the spike in usage.

Re: Highly Data Usage

StephenB — Thu, 01 Apr 2021 10:56:00 GMT

@Retired_Member wrote:
I have had my Arlo cameras (3 ultra 2 and a wired doorbell) installed for a couple months now. I’m seeing substantial increases in my internet data usage causing overages with Xfinitys 1.2 TB limit.

Any idea on how many minutes of recording you are making per day? Also, how often are you needing to recharge the batteries?

If you are using activity zones, you'll need to de-activate them to make this estimate (cloud activity zone processing still requires the video to be streamed to the cloud, where it is analyzed).

Re: Highly Data Usage

Retired_Member — Thu, 01 Apr 2021 12:13:58 GMT

Yesterday there was 20 minutes of data recorded. The vast majority of these were my dogs in the back yard. I would love if there was a feature that would run the object detection locally and allow you to choose the object types that get recorded (similar to smart notifications).
That seems like a huge disadvantage to using activity zones and possibly has some privacy implications. I don’t want 100% of the video uploaded to the cloud What’s the point of having a base station if it can’t do some of that analysis locally?

Re: Highly Data Usage

StephenB — Thu, 01 Apr 2021 13:05:47 GMT

@Retired_Member wrote:
I don’t want 100% of the video uploaded to the cloud What’s the point of having a base station if it can’t do some of that analysis locally?

Machine learning algorithms require specialized processing engines - especially when applied to video. Doing the analysis locally would add quite a bit of cost to the base stations. Even without the ML bit, they would still need hardware acceleration to do the video decoding in real time (or a much more expensive CPU).

Many folks don't see the point of the base station, which is why newer cameras give you the option of connecting to your home WiFi. Base stations do improve battery life (when they are in the right location), because the wifi in the base is tuned differently than it is in a home router.

Smarthubs also give you the option of using direct access to local storage instead of having a subscription. If you don't need smart notifications or activity zones, that would greatly reduce your uplink bandwidth. It is a bit harder to use, and you can't access the videos from the web browser.

In any event, for better or worse, Arlo has always been built on a cloud-based service.

@Retired_Member wrote:
Yesterday there was 20 minutes of data recorded.

If you deploy local storage in the base station, you can see exactly how many GBs of data that is. And that will store everything streamed to the cloud. Arlo recommends 3 mb/s uplink per ultra camera - which is conservative (high).

20 minutes at 3 mb/s amounts to 450 MB of uplink bandwidth (20*60*3/8 = 450) - which is about 14 GB/month. A lot less than the 1.2 TB data cap - roughly 1%. If you watch every video once, then of course the total bandwidth use would double.

Re: Highly Data Usage

Retired_Member — Fri, 02 Apr 2021 15:28:23 GMT

@StephenB wrote:
20 minutes at 3 mb/s amounts to 450 MB of uplink bandwidth (20*60*3/8 = 450) - which is about 14 GB/month. A lot less than the 1.2 TB data cap - roughly 1%. If you watch every video once, then of course the total bandwidth use would double.

You would think this would be the case, but I'm seeing drastically different numbers. I monitored my bandwidth usage and then unplugged the power to my base station. In the image attached, you can see a drastic reduction in usage once I unplugged it.

Re: Highly Data Usage

Retired_Member — Fri, 02 Apr 2021 15:27:23 GMT

Re: Highly Data Usage

StephenB — Fri, 02 Apr 2021 15:53:04 GMT

@Retired_Member wrote:

This is download bandwidth, not upload bandwidth. The base station shouldn't be downloading much of anything, other than the occasional firmware update.

Re: Highly Data Usage

Retired_Member — Fri, 02 Apr 2021 16:06:57 GMT

@StephenB wrote:
This is download bandwidth, not upload bandwidth. The base station shouldn't be downloading much of anything, other than the occasional firmware update.

I don't know what to tell you, the only change I made was unplugging the base station.

Re: Highly Data Usage

StephenB — Fri, 02 Apr 2021 21:44:52 GMT

@Retired_Member wrote:

@StephenB wrote:

This is download bandwidth, not upload bandwidth. The base station shouldn't be downloading much of anything, other than the occasional firmware update.

I don't know what to tell you, the only change I made was unplugging the base station.

If you plug it back in, does the download bandwidth go back up?

Re: Highly Data Usage

Retired_Member — Mon, 05 Apr 2021 18:38:59 GMT

@StephenB wrote:

If you plug it back in, does the download bandwidth go back up?

I plugged it back in, on 4/2, and have not seen the same data usage since. I'm going to keep an eye on it but it seems like it was just stuck on a download.