How To Monitor Home Network?

Question

What I want is a program that could tell me exactly how much bandwidth a certain IP Address in my home network used within a period of time that I specify.

I have about 10 devices in my home network, all with static IPs. My Internet bandwidth per month is 90GB, I want to monitor the network usage to find out how much bandwidth each device uses per month.

For example, is there some program that could give me an output like this:

As of August 1, 2010:

IP Address Usage
192.168.1.10 5GB
192.168.1.11 1GB
192.168.1.12 30GB

Hopefully someone knows a really simple freeware program to do this. I also know that you can monitor network performance using the built-in 'perfmon' Performance Monitor program installed with Windows. I haven't figured out how to be able to list for the different IP addresses.

Thanks,
Ghost

Answer 1

Bandwidth monitoring is usually done by companies, not individuals, so the technology exists but it is usually expensive. Solar Winds software is an example of software that can do it, but you usually have to have a capable router to send the info back to the server for processing. Most of the time this is done with Netflow, or you can monitor things with IP SLA if the provider was willing to work with you or you controlled both ends.



In this case, about the only way I could think to do this would be a decent router like a Cisco or Juniper and use Netflow to get the stats. You can find free software out there that can gather the stats from the Netflow, but you need a dedicated machine to do it. You also have to know how to setup Netflow to get the info you want.



Also, the problem with your script is you are likely getting broadcast and random internal traffic in the mix as well, you can't sniff the LAN and expect to get your WAN usage.



Last ditch would be to demand something from your ISP since they are limiting you it is only right they give you usage stats.

Answer 2

That should be the router's job. If your router doesn't have this capability, you can look for a more advanced one (more expensive and complex to setup for sure).



If you like to hack a little bit, you could setup a linux box to do the routing and use monitoring modules to get what you want.



Otherwise, the simplest solution is to install a bandwidth monitor on each computer, but finding a good one for free is not that easy.



EDIT: Your Linux script could have been close to the right solution. But like I said, the information ideally needs to be taken from a router.



You could probably do it like in your script if all your computers are on the same segment (ie: connected together thru a hub), but it won't catch everything if some are connected directly to the router or using wireless connections.



Also note that there will be small discrepancies between what you monitor and what goes through on your DSL line because of packet encapsulation.

Answer 3

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