Data Monitoring

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alvdy

27 posts

Geek

#31519 20-Mar-2009 14:40

Hi everyone
At home we have at least 5 different people accessing the internet all at one time. We are on an uncapped plan with Xnet paying $0.01 a Mb.

Basically at any one time there could be:
3 Macs
2 Windows Pcs
1 iPod Touch
any number of virtual machines (probably up to 5)
and any guests staying over
attached to the wireless network at any one time.

What I really want to do is set up a server that can monitor all traffic for the IPs of each person connected to the network.
I was thinking that I could static IPs or MAC addresses to monitor the traffic to the internet only (not local network traffic) so to bill each person for their share of the downloading because my flatmates don't seem to be owning up to what they are using.
I am relatively competant at networking (studying it at CPIT) but really have no idea how I can do this.

I was wondering if anyone got the time they could explain the software and topology required to set this up to me.

Thanks so much
Allan Loveday

mjb

996 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 67

Trusted

#202360 20-Mar-2009 15:07

You want something like WebGauge.. but if you want to do it yourself, you want a router, not a server.

In its simplest form, a linux router using iptables is what you're after, with a netfilter table that matches each internal IP address (or mac address - look at ebtables) on the LAN. Then the counters for each rule in the table will tell you about usage.

contentsofsignaturemaysettleduringshipping

alvdy

27 posts

Geek

#202364 20-Mar-2009 15:39

Thanks for your quick reply
I kind of wanted a way to do it myself so if anyone knows of a way? I have a PC with windows server 2008 on it too by the way.
But this way looks awesome.
Would it still work with the VFX service that we have installed?

The setup would look something like this:?

Regs

4066 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 206

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Snowflake

#202391 20-Mar-2009 17:36

I was wondering if anyone got the time they could explain the software and topology required to set this up to me.

use a 1 port adsl router (like the dynalink freebies)
connect that to a hub (not a switch)
connect wireless AP to the hub
connect monitoring computer to hub (linux, windows etc) and use a network monitioring program like wireshark to sniff traffic in promiscuous mode (i.e. capture all packets going through hub)

if you use a switch instead of a hub you wont see all the traffic on the switch, only whats addressed to the port you are connected to

alternative to hub is a switch that can do port mirroring - you would then mirror the port that connects to the adsl router and sniff off the mirror port (second NIC in server)

another alternative is to load custom firmware on your adsl router (if supported) that can log and deliver traffic starts to another machine.

Sales Engineer
Snowflake
www.snowflake.com

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Twitter: @nzregs

Ragnor

8279 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 585

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#202413 20-Mar-2009 20:10

What wireless router and/or dsl modem do you have currently?