Bandwidth Monitor

Kemik · 1 Jul 2008 at 20:27

Hey all,

Over the past two days someone in the house has downloaded 4GB each day. I personally don't care, but BT do and they will limit our account.

So, can anyone recommend a free bandwidth monitor? I'd prefer something which emails me every day with the bandwidth used on that computer.

I've tried asking who's downloading but the usual "it wasn't me" reply comes back. If none of the computers report signifcant bandwidth usage I'll look at changing the password on my router (WPA, not WEP) and watching how much my brother's 360 is on.

Thanks.

tolien · 1 Jul 2008 at 21:22

Unless the router gives you those numbers, whatever you used would need to be installed on all the machines.

-Hotplate- · 1 Jul 2008 at 21:36

4GB a day is a lot. You can only rack up that amount of usage deliberately through file downloads. Some is downloading music or movies, probably via P2P.

I would definately change your password on your router and if possible better encryption than WEP which can be easily got around by following guides posted on the internet.

Software solutions are not that much use as they have to be installed on every PC and can be turned off. None that i know email you.

What you could do is log on to your router via its web based config utility and watch the status change. Everyone on the router will get an internal IP assigned. Something like 192.168.1.X where X is the PC. This is dynamic though and when someone logs off they will disappear.

I would watch the activity in the status box and see when theres **** loads going on. then look for PCs that are turned on and look for bit torrent clients.

Google Bit torrent clients, and look for people using these apps in the house.
Someone is talking the mick. Either that or your connection has been hacked.

ste_bla · 1 Jul 2008 at 21:56

-Hotplate- said:
4GB a day is a lot. You can only rack up that amount of usage deliberately through file downloads. Some is downloading music or movies, probably via P2P...

Maybe, maybe not. I downloaded 3 TV programs on Iplayer and accidently left the PC on over night and the iplayer program had sent about 2 gig of info plus with what i downloaded that couldnt be fair off 4gb

Deleted User 234324 · 1 Jul 2008 at 22:42

Would love for something like myself as well, as sharing with 4 other people who always pick the worst time possible to download things (when im playing a game online) would be nice to be able to limit and/or monitor bandwidth usage without having to setup a server.

volkan · 1 Jul 2008 at 23:12

MRTG: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRTG

tolien · 1 Jul 2008 at 23:13

volkan said:
MRTG: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRTG

Depends on the router doing SNMP, and won't give per-user stats unless the router does them (which virtually no consumer router does).

-Hotplate- · 1 Jul 2008 at 23:37

tolien said:
Depends on the router doing SNMP, and won't give per-user stats unless the router does them (which virtually no consumer router does).

Correct. I asked this question of a friend who works on networks for IBM and he said the same thing. You wont get this kind of functionality from a consumer router. What you need is a Cisco router apparently. Have a guess how much one of them costs ? :eek:

tolien · 2 Jul 2008 at 00:10

Not even Cisco routers will give per-IP data over SNMP, though a managed switch will give per-port data.
I don't need to guess though, there's an 877 at the bottom of my desk

Kemik · 2 Jul 2008 at 16:52

BT Home Hub gives the data transferred in total, but not for each PC.

I'm trying a few programs I've found on Google.