Graph & Traffic

Hello there,
I have a question about the graph. When I click on a peak and it shows me some amount of traffic in the bottom left, just what exactly does it show me? Take this example of some peak in the graph. It’s not shown in the screenshots, but the very highest point of the peak shows 1.6 GB. For comparison, I looked at different points of the peak, like so:

In the above picture, it shows some 900 MB. I clicked slightly off peak, as can be seen. Now I click a tiny amount to the right, as can be seen in the picture below:

As can be seen in the picture above, suddenly, it shows 1.6 GB! That is almost double the amount. But my point of inquiry didn’t change much, it’s just a couple seconds off from before. I wanted to know what numbers I was really working with, so I went to Usage and checked the peak out. Sadly, I can only look at a minimal time window of 1 hour in Glasswire, so the accuracy is a bit limited.

In this third picture above, I marked the area for which the traffic is shown from the Usage tab. There are a couple questions I have about this issue as a whole:

  • How do I find out what amount of traffic comprises a peak if the peak’s duration is less than 1 hour?
  • How am I supposed to read the ‘Graph’ graph with respect to traffic amounts?
  • Why does a minutely different click position lead to completely different measurement results?
  • What am I really shown in the bottom left when I click on the graph?
  • What is up with the vertical unit on the graph, which is not in traffic over time, but total data amount?
  • What is the amount of horizontal time window for the vertical unit? As in, a peak that hits a 1 GB line will not just have 1 GB of traffic, right? So what is the horizontal bin size for the vertical unit?

I find the graph pretty, but really, really, really hard to interpret when I need actual information rather than a general wonky idea of whats happening.

Thank you

For now please check https://blog.glasswire.com/2016/05/09/understanding-glasswires-graph-and-scaling-how-much-data-are-you-using-on-your-pc/ for details on how our graph works.

Meanwhile I’ll try to answer you in detail during the work week. Thank you for using GlassWire.

Thank you in advance for taking the time to give a more elaborate answer; and I do indeed feel that one is very necessary. Especially now that I have read through the blog article you kindly linked, my questions have become more rather than fewer. There is a very, very long post under that article which brings up most of what I found questionable about the explanations there.

I also noticed that sometimes GW will show the graph unit as being a data amount (“2 GB”) and sometimes a bandwidth (“2 MB/s”), so I figure it’s an oversight that never got fixed. We may already cross one point off my list, I guess.

Looking forward to your response! :smiley:

You will only see per second statistics on the “5 Minutes” where the data interval is one second. In all other graphs the data interval is longer…

Do you think you will find the time to address the issues I brought up? I think they are some fairly valid points about apparent misbehaviors of the software. Thank you, and happy new year!

Do you think someone will find the time to address the issues I brought up? I think they are some fairly valid points about apparent misbehaviors of the software. Thank you.

I’m just another user. Although I am heavily involved in this forum, my responses are not official or from the GlassWire team.

I can’t tell which view you are using because you cropped out that information. So I’m only going to comment in general.

The view you are using will determine the minimum window you can view. The following table is based on version 1 so it may not be up-to-date:

Graph view Time period Time window
5 minutes1 second1 minutes
3 hours1 minutes6 minutes
24 hours5 minutes1 hour
Week10 minutes6 hours
Month3 hours24 hours
Unlimited24 hours31 days

Note that GlassWire aggregates the throughput data over time to match the views. I really like this because I only want a rough idea of what happened with old history.

  • The peaks can change with each view.
  • If the peak is less than an hour then you won’t be able to tell in the Month or Unlimited views because data has been aggregated into at least 3 hour time period. The 24 Hour view will show you one hour and the shorter views smaller time intervals.
  • If you always want usage data history kept per second then you should probably look at using another application in addition to or instead of GlassWire. I commonly add other products if I need to start a test to yield more detailed data.

I usually use the Usage tab to summarize data for the period I want.

The graph is continuous but it is a smoothed area chart for the underlying data which is in time periods (some users have called them buckets) with sizes determined by the view. So a small movement in the click point can cross a boundary placing you in a different time period (bucket).

You are shown the throughput in that time period (bucket).

Myself and many other users have requested that the time period (bucket) unit should be displayed so it is more obvious what is being shown, e.g. that a peak of 600MB on the 3 hour graph view is for a one minute time period so “600MB/min”.

Here’s a link to a topic where I independently confirmed what the Graph tab is showing:

Yes, total data. The only view where the time period is displayed is the 5 minute view where the timer period is one second hence “KB/s” and MB/s" will be displayed.

Also see previous question.

A peak that hits 1GB will have 1GB in the timer period (bucket).

Also see two previous questions.

I hope this helps you.

Thanks @Remah.

Thanks for your feedback Silunare. For Win/Android we don’t get many complaints about our graph and we use it every day ourselves also. No UI/Graph system is perfect and we will improve GlassWire in the future.

For example we could have a “geek mode” that just uses straight up/down lines instead of a curved graph. We plan to try something like this soon with Android first actually and we’ll see the feedback we receive from it.

For some people GlassWire is confusing because we are a historical network monitor, not a “speed meter”. GlassWire has to update its graph and UI to show whatever timeline the user chooses, so it’s a complex process and a complex UI. https://blog.glasswire.com/2016/05/09/understanding-glasswires-graph-and-scaling-how-much-data-are-you-using-on-your-pc/

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