Monitor network traffic by device

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
A

AusQB

Distinguished
Apr 24, 2011
64
0
18,630
Our household often has a problem with exceeding our monthly internet data limit, so I'm looking for a way to monitor traffic between the modem/router and all attached devices. I don't really need to see data origin information, just packet amounts/sizes.

I'd want something with a simple GUI that shows clearly the total transferred data for each device and ideally to be able to break it down to show usage per month/day so that I can easily identify any outlying activity.

Additionally, but not importantly, it would be nice to have some little program that shows a notification on each attached device when a certain threshold is reached.

Any suggestions for software that might be useful?
 
Solution
B
Your problem is not software it is hardware. Some device needs to collect the data. It gets especially hard when you have wireless traffic involved and your router and modem are in the same device. There is no way to insert anything to do this collection.

First option is to load dd-wrt on the router and use its version of netflow to collect this data. It requires you to have a server running to actually store the data since the router itself has no place to keep the data it collects it just forwards the collected data to the server which analyses it and produces the reports. Problem is if you have a router/modem combo it is likely that you will not find any third party frimware like dd-wrt to run since the modem part of the...
Sort by date Sort by votes
B

bill001g

Titan
Aug 9, 2012
28,318
2,754
125,640
Your problem is not software it is hardware. Some device needs to collect the data. It gets especially hard when you have wireless traffic involved and your router and modem are in the same device. There is no way to insert anything to do this collection.

First option is to load dd-wrt on the router and use its version of netflow to collect this data. It requires you to have a server running to actually store the data since the router itself has no place to keep the data it collects it just forwards the collected data to the server which analyses it and produces the reports. Problem is if you have a router/modem combo it is likely that you will not find any third party frimware like dd-wrt to run since the modem part of the device is not open source.

The way that will work on any system but tends to cost more. Get another "router" but run it is as AP. Disable the wireless on the main router. Now you either insert a dual nic machine and cable it between the main router and the new AP and use it to collect the data or you buy a small managed switch to place between the 2 device that has the ability to mirror the data flowing between to another port. This allows you to attach a PC to collect and analyze the data.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
B

Bruce Geng

Honorable
Jul 4, 2013
32
0
10,560
I would recommend you to check your router's features first, most routers have Qos features to limit bandwidth. However, I doubt routers can have this kind of report.

To get bandwidth report, I believe you need a third party programs, you can try "WFilter Enterprise"(passive monitoring), or PRTG(snmp based).
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
B

bill001g

Titan
Aug 9, 2012
28,318
2,754
125,640


Again software is not the solution. Wfilter needs a switch installed with a mirror port or a computer placed inline to collect the data. PRTG is one of the better netflow data collectors on the market but the router must support netflow. You can not get session data from snmp and most consumer routers do not support even snmp much less netflow. And again this is a dedicated machine that must run 24x7 to collect and store the data and produce reports.

There really is no software only answer to this problem.



 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom