How to monitor visited websites ?

pc_monkey

pc_monkey

pc_monkey

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I use a Netgear DGN2200 (ADSL2+ modem router).

Is there a facility within the router's software to monitor websites that are visited by any user on my network, can't see any but it could be hidden just like MAC address filtering. If not, what software is available that does this, preferably free ?

cheers
 
If you want to monitor all machines than you require a proxy or something similar to route all traffic through. On a machine by machine basis there is probably loads of software available.
 
Cheers, maybe the machine by machine basis will be easier. I dont know what to look for, do you mind pointing me in the right direction please
 
Quite a lot of ways to do this really.

If the firmware supports port mirroring you can use that to duplicate their traffic to a monitoring station and view it there.

Another DIY possibility is ARP poisoning. Which is using a PC to spoof ARP to other hosts making them link the router's IP address to your MAC address so all internet traffic essentially proxies through your PC invisibly at layer 2. Though this isn't really something for a networking amateur, because if you do it wrong you can break internt for everyone.

Probably the simplest recommendation I can offer is to use OpenDNS as your DNS servers, I believe this allows you to see what URLs were requested from your network, however it'll only show from your WAN IP, it won't be able to give you per machine stats. But it would let you see if Someone was doing naughties, you can then use port mirroring or something similar to find out who.

Taking a similar approach you could host a DNS server locally and point your hosts to that. That will then forward DNS requests to ISP DNS servers but will almost certainly support logging which should be able to tell you which domain names were requested by which IP addresses on the LAN.

All of which can be done for little or no monetary investment :)
 
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