I have a BR1 on a motor coach that uses Verizon cell data as the primary internet source. My phones, pads and computers are all Apple. If I enable the BR1 to act as the wifi through cell, I burn 30+ GB of bandwidth a month. If I turn off the cell and let each device talk to the internet, I burn about 6GB a month. I am 99% sure it has nothing to do with the BR1. My sense is that it has something to do with Apple IOS and Mac OS and how they deal with wifi. It almost appears that my bandwidth is being burned up with some software checking that thinks that because it is wifi that it must be hooked to a WAN that does not have any bandwidth restrictions.
I would appreciate any thoughts and ideas of what is happening and any solutions.
I suspect that automatic downloads are turned off for cellular connections (see settings below), but they are downloaded when you connect to the Wifi. Can you check if that is the case?
You can turn Automatic Downloads on or off over your cellular network on an iPhone or iPad Wi-Fi + Cellular. Go to Settings > iTunes & App Store and turn Use Cellular Data on or off. Cellular Data downloads are limited to a file size of 100 MB or smaller.
Would it be possible to ban access to certain sites (as the download of update) while using an LTE connection and accept this access while using a WAN or WiFi as WAN connection?
Yes, I have cellular data turned off and the Mac’s are set to manual app download.
I get what you are saying, but 24 + GB seems like a lot of downloads.
I have tried to track it by using Verizon data usage to monitor who is using the most data. Usually 75% is the BR1. Then I have used the BR1 to look at Client usage and all the devices usually add up to no more then 6-7GB. When I turn off the modem(VErizon), the total usage drops back to about 6GB.
I honestly suspected that Verizon was doing something nefarious. The fact is that if the modem is connected to Verizon, the daily usage immediately jumps to at least 1GB a day and is consistent every day. Turn the modem off and everything settles back to 6GB. The Verizon usage monitor show all the devices at about the same whether the modem is on or not.
I also turned off the network health check to see if that made a difference. It did not.
Could you report this to [email protected] providing the serial number of you BR1? If you could enable remote assistance on the router as well we can assist in finding out what exactly is using the excessive data.
Curious as to how or if this issue was resolved. We implemented an M2M network for fixed location assets utilizing AT&T cellular as primary WAN with BGAN backup and are about to roll out Verizon Cell network. My AT&T data usage is incredibly high. We are using the Pepwave Max-BR1 for an oil & gas application for SCADA (Gas Control & Measurement). We are polling the device every 60 minutes and picking up a packet of info roughly 2kb each time (should be 1-2 MB per month). My monthly data usage is 15-20MB. We will be increasing polling to 1-3 minutes when we implement Gas Control. I have InControl2, WIFI and watch dog programs turned off; however, will be required to activate when we go live with our Gas Control program. Is it safe to assume average data consumption will always be in the 15-20MB range & higher? Our cellular plans pool monthly data, so we have some buffer.
No real resolution. Seems to me that there is a bunch of stuff that Apple does behind the scenes that is gobbling up bandwidth. Shut down a bunch of stuff and at the same time, Verizon instituted rollover GB’s, so I sort of gave up. Funny, it seems like the Apple’s of the world want us to go wireless, but assume everyone is tied to a cable somewhere. Now waiting for Elon Musk to do the space internet
Apple devices love to be on wifi. They were most likely synchronizing iCloud stuff (photos, songs, etc). It is possible that they were updating apps as well.
Unfortunately, apple isn’t wise enough to tell the difference between a wifi connection that has a cellular backbone vs a wifi connection for a home. As soon as the connection changes on the apple devices, it starts spraying crap out to the network for the mDNSResponder stuff.
On a similar note, the Pandora app also has a hard time determining when a wifi hotspot losing connectivity. When using cellular, when a connection is lost - Pandora goes into OFFLINE mode. When connected to a wifi hotspot (that uses a cellular connection as it’s internet connection) – it never goes to OFFLINE mode because it has an active wifi signal.
