Typical data use-cases that involve a sensor with an XBee Industrial Gateway may be about 1-3 MB/month of data. If the actual usage ends up being closer to 10-15 MB a month this can be unexpected and may be due to the presence of EDP protocol keepalive messages (device-send, server-send). The EDP application keepalives (device-send/server-send – which are 60 and 75 second intervals by default) are mandatory. The TCP specification requires that intervals have to be between 5 - 65535 seconds (18 hours).
However, even if one disables the Digi Remote Manager connection and the keep-alives, as well as turns off the Python script they may still see use over 5 MB in a month.
Recommendation:
To keep Digi Remote Manager data usage on an XBee Industrial Gateway/XBee Gateway low, there are two options:
- Tune in the device-send and server-send keepalives to be as long as possible without the carrier just killing the connection due to inactivity (in which case the gateway will need to re-establish the connection, which will use as much data as 50+ keepalives)
- Turn off the Digi Remote Manager connection entirely, and either bring it up on-demand when needed (if using the built-in APIs for uploading things like data points), or use web service APIs from Python.
We also make this same recommendation for Digi's XBee Cellular radios.
For more information on connectivity settings:
https://www.digi.com/resources/documentation/Digidocs/90001399-13/references/r-advanced-connectivity-settings.htm
Last updated:
Mar 31, 2020