Ways to Managing/monitoring internet usage of all household computers from 1 computer?

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panda123

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Master Geek

#90887 2-Oct-2011 12:17

Hi there, our internet usage have gone over the cap every single month and I want to know who is using up all the download. Does anyone know of a program I can download onto my computer which can monitor/manage all the internet usage of all the computers in the house from 1 main computer and also tell me each computer's daily/weekly/monthly internet usage.

All the computers/laptops connected to the internet in the house via cable and wireless.

freitasm

BDFL - Memuneh
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Geekzone

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#528243 2-Oct-2011 12:46

You could have this on the router (if you have a router capable of running Tomato or DD-WRT).

panda123

172 posts

Master Geek

#528246 2-Oct-2011 12:50

Ive got a Linksys WRT350N wireless-N and a D-Link DSL 504T. how can i check if my modem/router is capable of doing that?

freitasm

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#528251 2-Oct-2011 13:14

http://www.dd-wrt.com/site/support/router-database to check for DD-WRT support.
http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato to check for Tomato support.

panda123

172 posts

Master Geek

#528273 2-Oct-2011 15:02

Just realised my WRT350N is version 2 and tomato/DD-WRT is not supported on version 2. are there anyone other way i can monitor/manage internet usage without tomato/DD-WRT?

sbiddle

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#528278 2-Oct-2011 15:33

To monitor usage all internet traffic needs to go through a single device. In most home networks the easiest and simplest way to do this is with the router. In short, if your current router doesn't have the capability to run 3rd party software for monroting internet traffic, the easiest thing to do is replace it with one that does, or install additional hardware such as a Mikrotik device as a transparent bridge before your existing router to monitor usage, however programming such as a device to do what you want probably would be beyond your capabilities.

tonyhughes

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#528300 2-Oct-2011 17:57

Buy a router supporting DD-WRT / Tomato etc. Period.

My preferred solution for your scenario is Gargoyle Router (same router requirements as DD-WRT).

timbosan

2159 posts

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#528336 2-Oct-2011 21:41

If you have a spare PC, you can use it instead of changing the router, and use something like Untangle (http://www.untangle.com), which includes a full reporting suite. It will also give you spam filtering, ad blocking, anti virus etc and report on all these too.

The only thing is you need to give users static IP's or set the expiry of the DHCP leases to a long time, otherwise you will never get proper results (this applies to router based statistics too - anyone care to comfirm/correct????)

I used to run Untangle on a P4 with several devices behind it with 4 very active users and there was never any noticable slowdown.

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KennyM

221 posts

Master Geek

#528631 3-Oct-2011 17:13

Or try Networx.

Its a free program, install it on all computers then in advanced tick the box 'share info with others on network' or something along those lines.

You can then check the usage from any computer and can see 'overall network usage' or individual users.

We find it useful in our flat. Can see what everyone is using.
You can also set it to ignore local traffic (as streaming a movie to the ps3 would make it look like our usage went through the roof)

Kilack

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#528664 3-Oct-2011 18:41

Go with tomato (specifically toastman variety, has more bandwidth monitor stuff in it and other nice addons)

Or with gargoyle..
Gargoyle is nice because you can actually set quotas for certain computers (or an overall quota for all) and then choose to cut their internet off or throttle it to a specified speed once they hit the quota.. good if you are worried about runaway internet processes or users as even with a monitor it can be too late/expensive sometimes once you realise you've gone over..

I believe there is finally a new tomato official on the way too and some mods for tomato to get similar quota style stuff added like gargoyle.