Tracking roommate's usage for bill-splitting?

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BrianBoyko

4 posts

Wannabe Geek

#61525 18-May-2010 11:34

Hi.

I'm moving into an apartment that includes 10 gig broadband via TelstraClear. There are three other rooms that have not been lent out but they will be.

Now, 10G isn't enough for myself, so the deal I worked out with the landlord is that I'll get 80G from Telstra in my name, and he'll reimburse me what he was originally paying for the 10G.

Here's the kicker - my roommates are going to want to use the Internet too, I think. But I don't know how much. I think the fairest thing to do would be to set up traffic tracking by IP address on a router, and simply split the bill proportionally by how much Internet everyone uses.

Can you give me advice on what router to get, and how to set this up? Will Tomato router give me the info I need?

Ragnor

8085 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#331319 18-May-2010 12:46

The main official versions of Tomato and DD-WRT don't really do what you want out of the box. However there are modified versions and addons that can do it I think. Haven't really looked into it myself as we're on Big Time at home atm.

There are other firmware versions for Linksys WRT54GL's that claim to do it eg: http://www.gargoyle-router.com/

There are a other few ways to handle the situation too:

Most houses have two pair of copper phone line coming in, you could get your own adsl connection on the 2nd line/pair (naked adsl from Snap/Maxnet/Xnet for example so you're not paying for a landline).

Pros:
Completely separate
No need to track usage
Not sharing speed/performance with someone else
Can use a better/different ISP than Telstra (one that peers locally at APE/WIX for example)

Cons:
Costs more than sharing (probably).

Spare/old PC with 2 network cards running a linux based gateway/firewall/proxy distro. Examples: Smoothwall, IP Cop, Monowall etc etc. You set this up as a gateway so all traffic goes through this box, most have good traffic monitoring.

Pros:
Web proxy/cache saves on bandwidth by caching static files
Tons of options/settings and control
Cheap (use old spare hardware, costs nothing for the software)

Cons:
Have to have reasonable networking/pc hardware knowledge to set it up

Webgauge does what you want http://www.webgauge.co.nz/

Pros:
Does what you want, bill splitting.

Cons:
Software as a service has a monthly charge
Not sure how good the other options in the modem are (QoS) etc.

Lenovo

Lenovo computer and accessories deals (affiliate link).

BrianBoyko

4 posts

Wannabe Geek

#331348 18-May-2010 13:28

I think Gargoyle might be my best bet. I don't have any old PC hardware lying around. I just moved to New Zealand from the states. I'll eventually *have* old PC hardware lying around, but if it didn't fit on the plane, I didn't bring it with me.

webwat

2036 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#331603 18-May-2010 21:23

I tried something similar with monowall once to investigate whether I can QoS each user, and different addons can do thngs like blocking over-quota users too. I think monowall and pfSense are the best out of all the "nix" routers but you might want to turn off the NAT if you have problems with VoIP and gaming etc because your modem does NAT already.

Time to find a new industry!

semigeek

1604 posts

Uber Geek

#331643 18-May-2010 22:30

Or if you like Belkin products, you could buy the N1 Vision
http://www.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=377018#

BrianBoyko

4 posts

Wannabe Geek

#331748 19-May-2010 09:05

The Belkin only gives usage over past 24 hours, not past month, which is what I really need.

Ragnor

8085 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#331891 19-May-2010 15:29

Hmm Tomato on a Linksys WRT54GL or Asus WLG 520GU the admin ui doesn't actually break down usage per user but the full data is stored in the logs.

You could probably give all users fixed ip address
Setup the the bandwidth logs to a CFIS network share
Run some sort of tool or program to create a report from the logs by ip address or mac address.

kontonnz

137 posts

Master Geek

#331895 19-May-2010 15:40

Why not save yourself a headache and just split the bill equally.... it will save your self a lot of arguments l8r on; tracking usage via IP/MAC addr allocation really is not that reliable, for a lot of reasons..... if you really want to separate the billing then you need an authentication system where usage is tracked against a specific user acct otherwise you just open your self up to disputes; follow the KISS principle and just split the bill....

gehenna

7958 posts

Uber Geek

Moderator

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#331905 19-May-2010 16:03

Surely easier just to track your own usage and then subtract the difference to work out your flatmates?

BrianBoyko

4 posts

Wannabe Geek

#331909 19-May-2010 16:20

The problem with traffic on the desktop is that it does not always equal traffic at the router - especially if there's packets that do not make it through the firewall provided by the router. That traffic IS counted on the ISP's end, though, because it obviously made it through THIER router.

Additionally if there's a massive discrepancy between what we record and what Telstra records, having that kind of information would be useful if we end up in small claims court because Telstra says we downloaded 500 gigs and we have evidence we only downloaded 100.

webgauge

1 post

Wannabe Geek

#336388 30-May-2010 21:34

Webgauge does what you want http://www.webgauge.co.nz/

Pros:
Does what you want, bill splitting.

Cons:
Software as a service has a monthly charge
Not sure how good the other options in the modem are (QoS) etc.

The WebGauge router uses DD-WRT as the router's "operating system", so functionality which is available in DD-WRT is also available in WebGauge.

However, please be aware that modifications to the DD-WRT settings may interfere with our usage meter software, which assumes that most things have been left with their default values.

cjmack

162 posts

Master Geek

#339179 7-Jun-2010 22:38

I had flatmates move in, and all of a sudden my internet was crawling, and all my data was going. Of course, nobody was owning up.

I bought a Linksys WRT54GL and installed Gargoyle. I tracked data with it for a week, and found that one flatmate was using as much as 1GB every 2 hours.

I then used Gargoyle to assign static IP's via the MAC address on each PC, and gave everyone a set quota of data to use. Once the data was used, they got locked out until the defined reset date. (Can be daily, weekly or fornightly)

You can also assign a group of IP's (eg Sam's desktop, Sam's Laptop wired and Sam's laptop wifi) can all be assigned the same data quota. You can also set the quotas to only be active at certain hours, great if you have a plan that has unlimited data during off-peak.

Gargoyle is great, and very very versatile!

1080p

1332 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#343308 19-Jun-2010 20:19

I plan to set this up with my new ADSL setup. I am building a home router with some hardware I already have. Will be running pfSense and will have some nice graphs to show to anyone who asks.

Most other options I have investigated are non-router based and almost always require the user to run software on their PC which can likely be disabled if you have a malicious flatmate.