How can I monitor my housemates' internet activity?

[memyselfandi]

Personally I'd run ntop under linux (the free windows version is limited on the amount it captures) and allow it to monitor the network for a while and see what it showed.

That will listen to the network and will show you which boxes are sending traffic to what internal and/or external hosts and how big this traffic is. It will also tell you what protocols are being used. This information is displayed via a nice web interface.

Of course that would mean that you need to have a linux environment running, (although a quick google seems to indicate that the SLAMPP Live CD seems to include it). I've never used this distribution (I normally have this installed a package on my SuSE server at install time) so YMMV.

More info.

This doesn't need anything installed on the other boxes.

Edit: also see here. The little bit of sleuthing he mentions would be look at the bandwidth usage by host summary table.

 

[Liquidfox]

Just leave 80 and 445 open. I'm sure they'll notice though, or find a workaround.

It's 443 for HTTPS, but that would also bork many other things like MSN, Email, which i'm sure quite a lot of people would use...

A better router is probably the easiest step, even if you could flash the router, i'd be hesitant in-case it all went **** up

 

[FrenchTart]

It's 443 for HTTPS, but that would also bork many other things like MSN, Email, which i'm sure quite a lot of people would use...

A better router is probably the easiest step, even if you could flash the router, i'd be hesitant in-case it all went **** up

Oops /re the 445/3 thing Not sure why I often get that mixed up.

I agree that it'd be far better to use a better router. However, blocking all the ports in the world would be fun - just to see their reactions

 

[jaybee]

Just block the torrent ports on the router? How are they using torrents currently? Are you using port forwarding on the router on ports assigned by yourself? If so, then err...don't. Block the ports. Simple and free?
For me personally, I see this come up on these forums quite a lot, and I think the only way I could ever have lived in shared accomodation of that nature (i.e. with students) with an internet connection, is to just tell them all I will pay for the setup if you let me administer it, and then I would promise to administer it fairly. Then I'd get a router that you can equally split and assign out the bandwidth per person (QOS). Better still if you can, get everyone to put in an equal amount of money (say a tenner) and you can buy the router and its fair for everyone. Surely everyone wants it fair? I think it's massively inconsiderate to run torrents in hours when you would use the net for browsing/gaming anyway. Tell them to only use torrents between say midnight and 6am - this is when the majority of people do anyway to avoid bandwidth capping by ISPs.

 

[FrenchTart]

Just block the torrent ports on the router? How are they using torrents currently? Are you using port forwarding on the router on ports assigned by yourself? If so, then err...don't. Block the ports. Simple and free?
For me personally, I see this come up on these forums quite a lot, and I think the only way I could ever have lived in shared accomodation of that nature (i.e. with students) with an internet connection, is to just tell them all I will pay for the setup if you let me administer it, and then I would promise to administer it fairly. Then I'd get a router that you can equally split and assign out the bandwidth per person (QOS). Better still if you can, get everyone to put in an equal amount of money (say a tenner) and you can buy the router and its fair for everyone. Surely everyone wants it fair? I think it's massively inconsiderate to run torrents in hours when you would use the net for browsing/gaming anyway. Tell them to only use torrents between say midnight and 6am - this is when the majority of people do anyway to avoid bandwidth capping by ISPs.

I've lived in shared houses for a number of years and took this stance:

No downloading on individual PCs
Living room PC "Downloadserver" is on 24/7 and can have as much downloading on it as anyone likes - however, I configure the settings on it so that it doesn't kill the inet for everyone.
If anyone abuses this I disconnect them/block ports/whatever.

Easy to administrate the network if you use a decent router or a smoothwall box. Once people get used to it they're generally happier anyhow - before I took over things the internet was slow as ****.

 

[King Arthur]

get your self a linux firewall router i.e. clark connect and then only access to the internet at certain times of the day.

Time-based Access Control allows an administer to enforce time-of-day web access to users or computers (IP or MAC address) using the web proxy.

Phil