Wi-Fi & connectivity

[capnfinvark]

I know this is an older thread but it's the only one I can find that fits my situation. I have had a number of rokus over the years and currently have a Roku Ultra and a Roku Stick+

My wife and I rarely use much data so normally our 700gb monthly cap is twice our actual usage.

But in the lasy two months we have had five days where the Roku uktra goes crazy and downloads 300- 350gb in one day. The stick seems fine. 

Our service provider said they rarely see such speeds even from households with massive numbers of users. Needless to say we have been paying bandwidth penalties that add up quickly because until last week I hadn't figured out it was the Roku doing it. 

It turns out even though we have the Roku plugged into ethernet, we have used it on wifi in the past and it is not configured to connect to wifi but still had the password in it, but the Mac address doing all the crazy activity was the wifi Mac and during this time, all of normal viewing went over the ethernet. The wifi did nothing on any day where the unit wasn't going crazy. All normal viewing went over the ethernet. 

I had to block the wifi mac in my eero to ensure it wouldn't go crazy again, but that's assuming the base unit won't go crazy on the ethernet now that it can't go crazy over the wifi interface. 

I am concerned if I need to ditch the ultra and replace it with another stick or even a fire though we really prefer  Roku. But at $20-30 extra a month every time this happens I can't afford it if this is some kind of bug. I've had the ultra for years and it didn't start until Sept. Did it two days in Sept, and the days in Oct. Downloading at massive data rates for 12+ hours at a time 😞

Did you ever hear anything more? 

[RokuCarly]

We appreciate you for posting here in the Roku Community, @capnfinvark!

Thanks for sharing your input and for raising your discoveries with us. 

Please be aware that the amount of MB/GB used depends on the device's current resolution. It might be 4K Ultra HD, 1080p, or 720p. Additionally, it depends on the apps or channels you use and how much time you spend streaming each day. Different resolution types, as well as apps and channels, have their own usage of MB/GB. 

Independent apps or channels on the Roku streaming platform constantly upgrade or update their apps, so it may be possible that it will cost you more MB/GB.

Let us know if there's anything else we can be of assistance with. Hope this clears everything out. 

Best regards,
Carly

[atc98092]

@capnfinvark that is very bizarre. As mentioned, higher resolution streams use more data, but numbers like that would be streaming 4K material on a constant basis. For example, Netflix streams 4K at about 17 Mbps (maximum, they can actually achieve 4K as low as 10 Mbps). That would be a hair over 1 Gbit per minute and 61 Gbit per hour. Converting gigabit to gigabyte (most ISPs measure in GB), that's 7.6 GB per hour. Streaming constantly for 24 hours would still only be 182 GB. I can't fathom what a Roku could be doing with a data stream like that. It doesn't have any internal memory that could absorb a fraction of that data. I have never seen that with any of my Roku devices, both wired and wireless connected.

You can remove your stored WiFi settings by going into the Roku settings menu and under System/Advanced system settings you will see Network connection Reset. This removes all your previously saved WiFi SSIDs and passwords and restarts your Roku. Then it won't be able to connect to your network wirelessly unless you set it up again. Your Ethernet connection will remain working without a problem. 

[capnfinvark]

Thanks - yes I'm familiar with data rates. Our Rokus are all set for 720 for bandwidth purposes. And we keep them on the home screen when not streaming to ensure no background data streams. The data rates I've seen on these five days since last month average out to about 30GB/hour which is at least 3 times if not more of a typical 4k stream (and we don't use any 4k streams).

As was mentioned on this original thread - this appears to be the device caught in some kind of download loop since unless the Roku is capable of self-streaming 3-4 4k streams by itself simultaneously there is no way I could see legitamte use of the device even interactively could result in this much traffic. But on top of that it randomly starts at like 3 or 4 am when we have been asleep and not using the Roku for a while. So I was hoping someone might know if this was a bug similar to the one above maybe reintroduced by the recent software update it got in I think July or August or if anyone was able to help try to figure out what it was doing so a bug could be resolved.

Otherwise I may have to stop using it and replace it with a device that isn't doing that- I hate to do that as the ultra has never done this in the years I've had it and this behavior has already cost us more than a new Roku would cost 😕

[capnfinvark]

Thanks Dan - I agree. I'm in IT during the day and nothing it was doing made sense. I almost believed the eero was getting the identification wrong until i triple checked all the macs for all my devices and confirmed they lined up.

a runaway process doing effectively nothing is all i could come up with as I agree there is no legitmate use case I can think of where a Roku would be able to utilize this kind of stream. My fiber provider agreed that they rarely saw anyone achieve that kind of data rate even for an hour much less 12-14 though many people think they need it 🙂

I have never seen any behavior like this from the Rokus either. I did remove my wifi info as well as blocking the wifi mac on the eero - and I'm hopeful that stops it - but because i don't know what process is going crazy, I can't be sure it won't suddenly try to download some random piece of info over the ethernet next time. Though the fact it made no effort to use the Ethernet during this crazy behavior even though the ethernet continued being used for all legit use gives me hope it really was some kind of secondary interface gone mad issue.

I mostly care of course because while my base fiber plan is a great deal, the $10/100GB overage is not at all a great deal - especially when the Roku manages to charge up $20-30 of overage in one night doing nothing 😕

[atc98092]

Yeah, I have an unlimited data plan with Comcast, and it's worth it even though there's only three of us in the house. My wife uses IPTV channels constantly, so there's a pretty constant stream throughout the day. I telework 4 days a week when I'm not traveling, and my daughter teleworks one day a week. She's also a heavy gamer, so that's likely a bit of my data as well. If I didn't have unlimited data, the ceiling would be one TB per month. I slightly exceed that every month. I could probably make a bit of an effort to stay under it, but it wouldn't really save me hardly any money. It's actually less expensive to rent their modem (which provides free unlimited data) than to provide my own modem and pay for unlimited data. Crazy, I know. But it's a fact. 

[RowQued]

This just happened to me as well. I caught it during the day when I saw a spike in my usage through AT&T. At the top of the list was Roku between 11 and 1 PM. It spikes up and no one was watching it. Nothing was being downloaded. TV wasn’t on. But this thing was just sucking from the Internet.