Chromebook Bandwidth Issue

[rrafluap]

Hi,

 

Does anyone else experience issues with Chrome Devices and bandwidth? We average about 50 windows machines on at a time (all day), then we have around 35 Chromeboxes and 25 Chromebooks which get used primarily in the afternoons.

 

We can have all Windows machines using our internet connection with varying levels of use, from emails to youtube streaming with very little effect on bandwidth use. The when a group of pupils connect using the Chrome devices, our bandwidth usage goes through the roof. Even logging in seems to use a massive amount of bandwidth. I look online and it says about them being pretty bandwidth light... This isn't the case here though?

 

I wouldn't be too fussed but the windows users can grind to a halt and also our VoIP phones suffer because of it too.

 

Any advice would be gratefully recieved.

 

Thanks.

[PrimaryNetMan]

Are you making use of Android Apps on your Chromebooks?

[rogerdnixon]

If you have a limited amount of bandwidth, I'd make sure you have updates set in device policy to scatter updates over a few days. A large number of devices all updating at the same time can hammer bandwidth. Additionaly, if you are using Android apps and wiping local user data each session - they they all have to download again. I'd disable Android apps outside of a 1:1 deployment.

[rrafluap]

We don't have a huge connection but it should be adequate. Its 20/20 but burstable up to 80 (we regularly get 70) and have 2 of those, load balanced.

 

I'll have to check regarding the Android Apps although I think that they don't use them. I've now switched off the wipe local user data option, we had this enabled a while back as there was a bug that required it to be wiped as a workaround. We have storage issues on them which is why it was on also, the storage fills up as soon as its enrolled on the domain which is strange.

[ADMaster]

Updates were the bandwidth killer for me. But they are manageable.

1. If you can get one I highly recommend a cachebox.

2. If you have some other appliance firewall / filter that can do bandwidth control / qos, throttle dl.google.com and of course give high priority to voip.

3. As others say, scatter updates.

[rrafluap]

Updates were the bandwidth killer for me. But they are manageable.

1. If you can get one I highly recommend a cachebox.

2. If you have some other appliance firewall / filter that can do bandwidth control / qos, throttle dl.google.com and of course give high priority to voip.

3. As others say, scatter updates.

 

My assumption would be that it's not the updates as our Smoothwall would cache it and already had the phones have high priority but didnt do anything.

 

The updates were scattered over a day but have now changed that to 7 instead.

[SpaceInvader83]

Out of interest what version of ChromeOS are you running on the Chromebooks and what auth method on Smoothwall? We had an issue on v69/70 and they were relentlessly hammering our smoothwall box on the login screen, each device many many times a second. It's been fixed on v71 after I logged a bug , I think we were getting like 2.5 million hits to Google due to the 407's a day at one point. Obviously this may not be an issue depending on your auth method.

[rrafluap]

I'd have to check the version but we aren't seeing anywhere near that amount of hits.

 

Out of curiosity, if you guys wanted to know the purpose of a URL, where would you go to search it? Basically there's a couple of Google ones and a search comes up with nothing but there might be a site that has a database of them and their functions?

[XiJ]

We found one of our schools regularly hitting the 37mb limit that was generally the ceiling of their line with chrome books. We used the chrome management options to scatter the updates. And also setup a queue across all devices in the router to share bandwidth more equally. Problem largely solved

[rrafluap]

I've now scattered the updates and hasn't changed anything.

 

One of our highest hit URLs is play.google.com, I'm presuming that it's for apps/app updates on the chrome devices but is normal to have so many on just 30 chrome devices used for 2 hours?

[SpaceInvader83]

A good place to start if you haven't already is to auth except and whitelist the Connect for Chromebooks category on smoothwall.

[mavhc]

Can you sort by actual data transferred rather than hits to domains?

[rrafluap]

A good place to start if you haven't already is to auth except and whitelist the Connect for Chromebooks category on smoothwall.

I did have this on but didn't seem to make a difference. Will pop it back on after all the changes I've made and try it again.

[rrafluap]

Can you sort by actual data transferred rather than hits to domains?

Yes I can, I'll re-run that report tomorrow.

[rrafluap]

Yes I can, I'll re-run that report tomorrow.

 

Here's our bandwidth usage for Wednesday. Numbers 1 and 3 aren't normally on there but there must have been an iOS update and I also added some categories to our WSUS server so that explains the Microsoft ones.

Edited March 7, 2019 by rrafluap
Attach the file!!!

[mavhc]

So a lot of youtube, quite a bit of gmail. Activsoftware appears to be IWB drivers? But in total on average that's only about 6Mb/sec. What's your internet speed?

[rrafluap]

The ActivSoftware is where it checks for a newer version, offers it to the users on startup and they are clicking yes to download it and never actually using it. Im going to roll out a newer version soon which disables the auto update check.

 

Our connections are 20/20 but burstable up to 80 (we regularly get just under 70) and have two of those connections.

[mavhc]

Do you have graphs of the bandwidth usage over the days? Is it maxing out?

[rrafluap]

It does seem so. I just dont understand whats going on to make it that high. As i've said, it seems to be when they are logging on rather than their actual web activity?

 

We've had a bit more use today compared to most as the Chromebooks have been used throughout the day.

[mavhc]

So it's syncing user stuff to the chromebook upon login, all the chrome sync stuff, passwords, bookmarks, extensions. What about files? web apps? android apps? Does it cache some locally? Are they reusing the same machines, is the profile being cached and reused or discarded?

 

I'd log into one chromebook in the evening, so you can see what 1 downloads, or filter by ip

[rrafluap]

That's my thinking too. I've checked the apps that we allow/force install and there's only 5 (ish) per pupil and are all less than 1MB each. I've also disabled Google Drive Syncing for Chrome devices.

 

 

In the past we were advised to disable the [Clear cached profile on logoff] (words to that effect) options as there was a bug. We have since turned it off so it isnt deleting them anymore. Although they dont use the same computers each lesson, I would say they are roughly the same. How can I see if its discarding or reusing the profiles?

 

I'm sure theres a bandwidth usage per IP report on Smoothwall so will use that and also filter by IP also and let you know.

[educachexpert]

Hi,

 

I've sent you a private message with some advice and reccomendation.

Let me know if it is of any help.