Network Flows on a Typical Home Network
In our ISP Network Report, we provide statistics on typical home Internet usage and latency, as they relate directly to the customer experience. For example, we found that the average download usage for fixed wireless subscribers is 12.7 GB per day, an 8% increase year-over-year.
In our previous posts, we haven’t explored lower-level home network statistics such as the number of flows, transport protocol usage, IP count, and packet rate. I’m not sure my home is ‘typical’ but using it as an example, this point aims to provide some insight into these areas. A bit about my home:
- Two adults, two children <= 13
- Four phones plus a tablet
- Two laptops
- Dual stack IPv4 and IPv6
- Three TVs with Chromecast
- Two Nest thermostats
- Half a dozen Google Home devices (from the mini to the display)
- A bunch of miscellaneous other little devices
First, the number of active IP addresses is shown. This includes both IPv4 and IPv6, so there may be some overlap in the underlying devices at any given point. There are roughly 60 active IP addresses in any given five-minute period. The total number of unique IP addresses was 197 (with link-local addresses removed).
The next question I had was how many active flows are there? This one is binned at one-minute intervals.
This shows that most flows are TCP (6) or UDP (17), and at any given time, there are more active TCP flows than UDP. Across all transport protocols, there were 369,932 unique flows.
When looking at bytes instead of flow count, we can see a constant amount of UDP traffic and sections with higher throughput that roughly align with streaming service usage (mostly Netflix). I don’t know what device is the source of the constant UDP traffic, but that’s an interesting find. I need to track that down, though I suspect it’s my new garage door opener that has a camera. Grrr 😠
Lastly, this chart shows the same time period but plots the packet rate instead of the byte sum.
The packet rate over time aligns well with the byte-based chart.
In summary, my ‘typical’ household has:
- 197 unique IP addresses with about 60 active in any given five-minute period
- 370,000 unique flows with the number of active flows varying widely throughout the day
- Streaming video is obvious in the traffic profile
- I’ve got a device sending a constant stream of UDP that I need to track down
