Software (or hardware) to monitor internet usage ?
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Seems like an app to monitor the bandwidth used on a given computer. If I have a mixture of desktops, servers, laptops, phones, tablets, game consoles, etc...that's going to be woefully inadequate. My router has a page that shows realtime bandwidth usage, and I can often see that *something* on my network is downloading as fast as my connection allows - and I have no idea what that might be. To be useful, these tools needs to start by telling you what device is sucking up the bandwidth. Then worry about individual apps. (so in my case, the first step is to map out what devices own the MAC addresses displayed by my router...something I've been putting for, oh...years now?)
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I've been receiving message from my ISP that I'm busting my internet quota (60gig/month which I think is on the low side in 2020 ) My ISP only show total usage by months, no breakdown on what I actually spend it on (which site/service). My router (tp-link archer C7) does show traffic, but not which site/service I use. Is there a good hardware/software solution to show what I'm actually spending my bandwidth on? My ecosystem is simple, Mac Laptop for (mostly) youtube and social media stuff and Windows PC for online gaming (average 1.5 hours per day) I rarely use netflix or other streaming services from my TV. I'd like something that I can run on both OSes if possible; but that will not collect data from both computers. (afaik). Any susgestions ?
I'd rather be phishing!
So you can keep track of all devices, look at Ubiquiti Unifi. Replace your WiFi router with a Dream Machine (that's what it's called) and turn on DPI and you get a good breakdown of the types of data and what is causing it. Use it at a few clients and recently converted at home and find it really useful, despite being on an unlimited plan, just like to have an idea what's going on. Rod
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Seems like an app to monitor the bandwidth used on a given computer. If I have a mixture of desktops, servers, laptops, phones, tablets, game consoles, etc...that's going to be woefully inadequate. My router has a page that shows realtime bandwidth usage, and I can often see that *something* on my network is downloading as fast as my connection allows - and I have no idea what that might be. To be useful, these tools needs to start by telling you what device is sucking up the bandwidth. Then worry about individual apps. (so in my case, the first step is to map out what devices own the MAC addresses displayed by my router...something I've been putting for, oh...years now?)
dandy72 wrote:
Seems like an app to monitor the bandwidth used on a given computer.
Yup.
dandy72 wrote:
If I have a mixture of desktops, servers, laptops, phones, tablets, game consoles, etc...that's going to be woefully inadequate
Can you temporarily set one up as a server, then install something on that? It's only hours and hours of work, but when you get into something like that, time flies
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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I've been receiving message from my ISP that I'm busting my internet quota (60gig/month which I think is on the low side in 2020 ) My ISP only show total usage by months, no breakdown on what I actually spend it on (which site/service). My router (tp-link archer C7) does show traffic, but not which site/service I use. Is there a good hardware/software solution to show what I'm actually spending my bandwidth on? My ecosystem is simple, Mac Laptop for (mostly) youtube and social media stuff and Windows PC for online gaming (average 1.5 hours per day) I rarely use netflix or other streaming services from my TV. I'd like something that I can run on both OSes if possible; but that will not collect data from both computers. (afaik). Any susgestions ?
I'd rather be phishing!
I was chasing this kind of problem recently and figured out, by a process of elimination, that BigTelco had been charging the home internet gigabytes for the traffic to the TV set top box. It's all IP traffic and they normally don't bill for packets for the set top box mac address. Until they screw it up. BigTelco's web site was able to show a nearly live version of this month's usage numbers, so I turned stuff off until the numbers stopped changing.
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dandy72 wrote:
Seems like an app to monitor the bandwidth used on a given computer.
Yup.
dandy72 wrote:
If I have a mixture of desktops, servers, laptops, phones, tablets, game consoles, etc...that's going to be woefully inadequate
Can you temporarily set one up as a server, then install something on that? It's only hours and hours of work, but when you get into something like that, time flies
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
I'm not sure I understand what you mean. The impression I got was that the app was designed to monitor the bandwidth usage for a given computer. If you want to get a complete picture of where your bandwidth is being used, you need something that monitors the router that all traffic is going through.
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I'm not sure I understand what you mean. The impression I got was that the app was designed to monitor the bandwidth usage for a given computer. If you want to get a complete picture of where your bandwidth is being used, you need something that monitors the router that all traffic is going through.
dandy72 wrote:
you need something that monitors the router that all traffic is going through
Or use a computer as a server. That gives you a lot more options, because you can install a lot more monitoring software on it.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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I've been receiving message from my ISP that I'm busting my internet quota (60gig/month which I think is on the low side in 2020 ) My ISP only show total usage by months, no breakdown on what I actually spend it on (which site/service). My router (tp-link archer C7) does show traffic, but not which site/service I use. Is there a good hardware/software solution to show what I'm actually spending my bandwidth on? My ecosystem is simple, Mac Laptop for (mostly) youtube and social media stuff and Windows PC for online gaming (average 1.5 hours per day) I rarely use netflix or other streaming services from my TV. I'd like something that I can run on both OSes if possible; but that will not collect data from both computers. (afaik). Any susgestions ?
I'd rather be phishing!
I'm sure there are going to be more sophisticated answers, but get a better router would be mine. I have a nicer Asus router, and it shows bandwidth used, and you can sort info by device (so you can see what device is using the most) and you can sort it by generalized web-traffic (ie: hulu, netflix, internet browsing, etc), so you can see what services are using the most bandwidth. I'm sure some of the nicer routers will give you similar info. It's not super in-depth like some dedicated monitoring/analysis tool is, but when I had the same problem, I was able to see that I was burning up 10's of GB of Netflix, as it was the elephant in the room bandwidth wise. I went to the site, and told it to lower it's quality to the next lower tier, and checked back after a few days and the usage amount was more inline. I think it was sending me high bitrate feed since my internet speed was so good, but it was causing a problem with the cap. I also was able to pinpoint a specific computer that was using more bandwidth than made sense. I believe the online backup was stuck in a loop and causing it to run constantly for a period of time. Rebooted the machine, and the usage went down to normal.
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I've been receiving message from my ISP that I'm busting my internet quota (60gig/month which I think is on the low side in 2020 ) My ISP only show total usage by months, no breakdown on what I actually spend it on (which site/service). My router (tp-link archer C7) does show traffic, but not which site/service I use. Is there a good hardware/software solution to show what I'm actually spending my bandwidth on? My ecosystem is simple, Mac Laptop for (mostly) youtube and social media stuff and Windows PC for online gaming (average 1.5 hours per day) I rarely use netflix or other streaming services from my TV. I'd like something that I can run on both OSes if possible; but that will not collect data from both computers. (afaik). Any susgestions ?
I'd rather be phishing!
I'm sure there are going to be more sophisticated answers, but get a better router would be mine. I have a nicer Asus router, and it shows bandwidth used, and you can sort info by device (so you can see what device is using the most) and you can sort it by generalized web-traffic (ie: hulu, netflix, internet browsing, etc), so you can see what services are using the most bandwidth. I'm sure some of the nicer routers will give you similar info. It's not super in-depth like some dedicated monitoring/analysis tool is, but when I had the same problem, I was able to see that I was burning up 10's of GB of Netflix, as it was the elephant in the room bandwidth wise. I went to the site, and told it to lower it's quality to the next lower tier, and checked back after a few days and the usage amount was more inline. I think it was sending me high bitrate feed since my internet speed was so good, but it was causing a problem with the cap. I also was able to pinpoint a specific computer that was using more bandwidth than made sense. I believe the online backup was stuck in a loop and causing it to run constantly for a period of time. Rebooted the machine, and the usage went down to normal.
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I've been receiving message from my ISP that I'm busting my internet quota (60gig/month which I think is on the low side in 2020 ) My ISP only show total usage by months, no breakdown on what I actually spend it on (which site/service). My router (tp-link archer C7) does show traffic, but not which site/service I use. Is there a good hardware/software solution to show what I'm actually spending my bandwidth on? My ecosystem is simple, Mac Laptop for (mostly) youtube and social media stuff and Windows PC for online gaming (average 1.5 hours per day) I rarely use netflix or other streaming services from my TV. I'd like something that I can run on both OSes if possible; but that will not collect data from both computers. (afaik). Any susgestions ?
I'd rather be phishing!
A movie will probably average around 4GB; HD, don't know. 10 or 15 "half-watched" movies, combined with the rest, and there goes your quota. Then there's browser versus an "app" watching movies. I'm convinced the browsers are way too busy, even when not navigating. Just idling, they use more resources than Visual Studio.
It was only in wine that he laid down no limit for himself, but he did not allow himself to be confused by it. ― Confucian Analects: Rules of Confucius about his food
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dandy72 wrote:
you need something that monitors the router that all traffic is going through
Or use a computer as a server. That gives you a lot more options, because you can install a lot more monitoring software on it.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
So when you say "server", you essentially mean have all traffic rerouted through that machine. I've never tried to set up a network that way, but that sounds like it could work. Is that "just" a matter of setting up that computer's IP as the gateway for every device that otherwise would try to connect to the router? Ideally that's be set up on the router (so there's a single location to edit), but then how do you set up the computer itself so it can talk to the router to reach the outside world (and not try to "get back to itself" in an endless loop)? As you can tell, I'm not expert on this matter.
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So when you say "server", you essentially mean have all traffic rerouted through that machine. I've never tried to set up a network that way, but that sounds like it could work. Is that "just" a matter of setting up that computer's IP as the gateway for every device that otherwise would try to connect to the router? Ideally that's be set up on the router (so there's a single location to edit), but then how do you set up the computer itself so it can talk to the router to reach the outside world (and not try to "get back to itself" in an endless loop)? As you can tell, I'm not expert on this matter.
dandy72 wrote:
Ideally that's be set up on the router (so there's a single location to edit) but then how do you set up the computer itself so it can talk to the router to reach the outside world (and not try to "get back to itself" in an endless loop)?
On the router, set it to allow access only from the IP of the selected server machine, then set the server as an alternative gateway on each of the other machines (without removing the router as the primary gateway), and don't set an alternative gateway on the server machine. • The router's docs will tell you which admin page to go to filter on IPs. • To set an alternative gateway, just click the Advanced button on the network adapter's TCP/IP properties dialog, and then the gateway section's "Add" button. With that set-up, if a non-server machine wants to access the network, it will try the router IP, be rejected, and fall through to the server, which will forward to the router. You can then install all manner of packet-sniffers and network monitors on the server machine, and get all the info you want much quicker and easier than by relying on what you can squeeze out of the router. When you're finished, there's no hurry to delete all the alternative gateways, because once the router is set to again allow access from all the machines, their requests will go straight to the router.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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So when you say "server", you essentially mean have all traffic rerouted through that machine. I've never tried to set up a network that way, but that sounds like it could work. Is that "just" a matter of setting up that computer's IP as the gateway for every device that otherwise would try to connect to the router? Ideally that's be set up on the router (so there's a single location to edit), but then how do you set up the computer itself so it can talk to the router to reach the outside world (and not try to "get back to itself" in an endless loop)? As you can tell, I'm not expert on this matter.
I've got an unsused motherboard laying around that has two network interfaces. I am seriously considering setting that up as a transparent pipeline, simply forwarding packet from one interface to the other without changing a single bit. This would require some fairly low level programming; I couldn't do it through a socket interface. But it is certainy possible, at a reasonable level of effort. This would be a plain single-cable-to-single-cable pipeline, invisible to either the end PC or the router. Either would transmit their packages onto the cable, with no concern for the pipeline machine. No routing/switching, just simple two-way forwarding, that would allow the pipeline machine to peek at every package it forwards. Later, as I gain experience, it could even not forward selected IP-packets. If new, unknown IP addresses where detected, as source or destination, it could inject a downstream series of packages reporting it to my PC, for me to check off "OK", "reject all traffic" or whatever action, and return to this "pipeline PC". I am sure that it would have more than enough capacity do DNS lookups to report more information with the "unknown address" report. I really expect this to be near-trivial, once I learn to do packet forwarding (which in principle is trivial as well...). My only problem is that this project currently is #34 on my list of near-trivial hobby projects.
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dandy72 wrote:
Ideally that's be set up on the router (so there's a single location to edit) but then how do you set up the computer itself so it can talk to the router to reach the outside world (and not try to "get back to itself" in an endless loop)?
On the router, set it to allow access only from the IP of the selected server machine, then set the server as an alternative gateway on each of the other machines (without removing the router as the primary gateway), and don't set an alternative gateway on the server machine. • The router's docs will tell you which admin page to go to filter on IPs. • To set an alternative gateway, just click the Advanced button on the network adapter's TCP/IP properties dialog, and then the gateway section's "Add" button. With that set-up, if a non-server machine wants to access the network, it will try the router IP, be rejected, and fall through to the server, which will forward to the router. You can then install all manner of packet-sniffers and network monitors on the server machine, and get all the info you want much quicker and easier than by relying on what you can squeeze out of the router. When you're finished, there's no hurry to delete all the alternative gateways, because once the router is set to again allow access from all the machines, their requests will go straight to the router.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
Neat. Ok, I can picture it. Thanks for that.
Mark_Wallace wrote:
then set the server as an alternative gateway on each of the other machines
That's really the bummer. I have, quite literally, over 100 VMs (not all running at the same time, obviously), and then probably close to 20 physical devices...some of which I'm not sure where these network settings reside. But I've copied and pasted this into OneNote, so when I get around to it, I have something more concrete to get me started.