Suggestions / Requests

1.2.53b Basic…

I have made one or two of these directly by email, but will post here for more public view.

Most important to me is an option to set a fixed vertical scale figure. As it is now, the graph is fairly useless. It tells me there is traffic, but I have to examine and do some rough transposition in my head to get a sense of speed. Cumbersome, particularly when the scale jumps around while I’m looking at it! With a fixed scale, I can get that sense in a quick glance.

Cosmetic: Would like to see “skin” option for red and green, pretty much standard for up and down traffic, respectively. The pink and green skin, while close, isn’t really either pink or green.

GW has indicated that a column for naming network devices will be added. Thank you!!

Memory use is generally pretty good these days, but when the main graph window is open, processor use is a fairly constant 10%. I don’t know if anything can be done about that, but it results in reluctance to keep the window open for reference, which is sometimes useful.

Thanks for taking input.

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I can appreciate the desire for a fixed vertical scale – in some instances. But for me, the auto flexing scale is ideal and a constant fixed scale would make Glasswire near useless. Any time there is a high level of traffic within the time range, most of the other activity would be reduced to an unintelligible line. The beauty of Glasswire is being able to see and compare over time – not just a short period. My daily review to check for possible invading agent would be almost impossible with a fixed scale.

So while I can support a fixed scale, I would have the additional condition that it be an option by button click and not the default.

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I agree about making it an option with configurable fixed speeds. I have a 30MB connection and have my regular desktop graph set to max at 20.

We have experimented with a fixed scale, but the usability wasn’t good. We’ll keep playing with it and see what we can add in the future. Thanks for your feedback!

I would prefer a fixed scale option with different scales for each time period (year, month, week, day, etc). That would ensure that I could make each axis roughly comparable.

Fixed scaling is easier to implement with longer timeframes
I can see why fixed scales are a problem with the “5 Minutes” view and possibly a problem with the “3 Hours” and “24 Hours” views. But I can’t see why they would be a problem with the “Week”, “Month”, or “Year” views which are so highly aggregated that graph scales vary much less. .

I suspect that most of the design focus is on what happens when fixed scaling the shorter time frames. But independent of the issue for shorter time frames, fixed scaling is worthwhile for many of us users who are as much interested in the long term view.

I have to view the scale and do a mental calculation every time I view the graph.
In terms of the shorter time frames, I want to be able to glance at the graph and see high usage. At present, I have to read the scale off the graph before I have any idea what level of traffic there is.

Normally, I’m only interested in the higher levels of traffic so it is a waste of time having to check the scale to find out whether the graph is showing significant throughput or not.

Here’s an example of how this could be useful. If my son is playing a particular online multiplayer game and I have traffic higher than 5Mbps then he will be impacted. We have a 100Mbps Internet connection and his traffic is low, but the issues arises from local Ethernet collisions and lack of quality QoS on our router. If he calls out, “Are you slowing me down?” then I can glance at a fixed-scale Graph or Mini Viewer and say “Yes” or “No”. At present, I have to look in more detail.

I have to view the graph to know what is really happening in the Mini Viewer
The lack of fixed scaling affects the Mini Viewer even more because there is no scale displayed in that window.

For those reasons, I don’t use the Graph much because it only has autoscaling so every “5 Minutes” or Mini Viewer graph looks much the same at a glance. To make use of that information, I have to first calculate the value on the scaled graph and, second, compare it with my “fixed” value threshold.

In practice, I don’t bother with the short-term graph view because the scaling changes so much. I use the usage view almost exclusively and don’t even bother with short-term time periods. This is much less than ideal because it tells me very little about what is happening right now and I still have to do a manual calculation if I want an hourly figure. But it is much easier to read a number and calculate once rather than having to read a graph and calculate twice.

With autoscaling I always have to check the graph scale even if I had looked at it only seconds earlier. By having a fixed scale, I avoid having to take the additional second or so to read the axis scale every time I view the graph.

What would help everyone is placing the axis scale, or another axis scale figure, at the leading edge of the graph which is where the action is - that is where my eyes are looking. At present, I look at the graph and focus on the far right, I then have to move my focus back to the far top left before returning to the far right. I have to do this every time I view the graph.

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For the longer term views you describe, I have no problems agreeing with you. But I also agree that the auto-scaling is very helpful to me for the 24-Hr and shorter views. And I tend to use those most often.

So I don’t think we’re at odds all and I appreciate your careful analysis.