Our bandwidth seems to be going through the roof recently well over a 1Gb being used each day. Well at least that is what the telstraclear online usage meter is sayingm, but my router (Linksys WRT54GL + DD-WRT v24) seeming to confirm this amount. Trouble there are 4 computers on our network and I can't seem to isoslate whcih one is using the bandwidth. In the 'old days' the Telstraclear usage meter showed bandwidth by IP addresses - now it is by time only. How can I track down where the 'leak' is?
The fear is that one of the machines has been compromised and is sending out spam, but that seems unlikely given that you are behind a router.
1GB/day is quite a lot, but can be achieved more easily than you might think. It's about what I average a day.
I would check the obvious things like movie/TV watching or torrenting. Especially if you have a torrent program still seeding old files, or set up to automatically download via RSS feeds. Remember that while you are downloading torrents, you are also sharing, so you can be using twice the bandwidth you think you are.
Another possibility that might not be obvious is online games. They also can use more traffic than you expect. For instance, IIRC I found that WoW can be up to 0.5 MB per minute (30 MB per hour).
Is your Wifi open? Check that your neighbours aren't sponging off your connection :)
BigBadaboom: The fear is that one of the machines has been compromised and is sending out spam, but that seems unlikely given that you are behind a router.
1GB/day is quite a lot, but can be achieved more easily than you might think. It's about what I average a day.
I would check the obvious things like movie/TV watching or torrenting. Especially if you have a torrent program still seeding old files, or set up to automatically download via RSS feeds. Remember that while you are downloading torrents, you are also sharing, so you can be using twice the bandwidth you think you are.
Another possibility that might not be obvious is online games. They also can use more traffic than you expect. For instance, IIRC I found that WoW can be up to 0.5 MB per minute (30 MB per hour).
Is your Wifi open? Check that your neighbours aren't sponging off your connection :)
Thanks for these suggestions. I have checked most of these out while there has been some 'torrent' stuff going on, it is not enough to account for the bandwidth. Most of it seems to be downloads rather than uploads. I use MAC filtering as security and have checked the DD-WRT to see if someone is 'sponging' but again all appears OK on that front. All laptops/PCs have a local firewall (either Zone alarm Symantec) as well.
And yes, I have been watching some of the Olympics on TV ONE's web-site but not a lot. The frustration I have is not having a tool/process that I can easily check which sites or PCs are using the bandwidth. It might even be my laptop and I don't even know.
Since you only got a few pcs, You could install NetLimiter 2 Monitor on each one (its free) tells you how much and what programs are using what traffic etc
What are you talking about? DD-WRT tells you exactly what each I.P on your network is doing, and how much data is transferring from LAN - WAN and vice versa...... Check the logs.
Shell into it and copy them out. probably in /var/log
But I am sure the web gui has something relevant on there..
Once you find your PC then look through it.
If you need further assistance just let me know and I'll give you a little bit more direction with DD-WRT
Also its most unlikely but your not running any FTP Servers or anything like that? check out theirs no pin holes into your network that you haven't authorized.... Could easily happen if you leave SSH open WAN side and a brutable password. People try to break into SSH all the time. Its a very common port to try attack. If you get root well........ its incentive.
connect to the router on ssh... do a tcpdump, check connections.
Netlimiter 2 works well for limiting your bandwidth usage as well as checking which machine is using exactly how much too, provided its installed on every computer in your network. It's perfect if you are using torrent programs and your uploads count towards your monthly cap - uploads can get out of hand quite easily if you're not careful, to the point where you're uploading 10 times what you're downloading. I would highly recommend you try it out.
SoftPerfect Bandwidth Manager works well too for monitoring from one machine but it costs and I found it quite buggy when I tried it.
Also if you have recently been watching video online such as the olympics on tv ones website I would suggest that's where the bandwidth is probably going if it's not the torrenting.
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