Network Monitoring

Hi there,

Please any help is much appreciated
what is a good device or software package can I use to monitor users on my network.
Look at their IP's, what sites they visit and how much data they use?
We always get infected and always have people download mp3s etc

Thanks for any help!

This topic should've been posted under http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/forumdisplay.php/114-Networking-and-Security

How many computers do you have?
What network routers + firewalls do you currently have?

Monitoring like the amount of traffic per IP address is rather simple with MikroTik routers if you have enabled Accounting.
Viewing the sites that people visit is invasion of privacy and not something that is easy.

Most corporates contract external companies to run their network + firewalls, and they usually just allow certain websites.

... in response to your PM:
I'm basically using exclusively MikroTik equipment - both at home and at the office that I'm working at. Please just take note that I'm a software developer and not a network manager of some sort.

You can view usage per user and block certain websites, but you won't be able to block HTTPS sites at all.
The other problem that you'll have as soon as you start blocking certain sites is that people will use proxy/tunneling sites.

The easiest way to block certain websites would be to get yourself an OpenDNS account and then block the sites according to categories. By using OpenDNS, you'll lose out on local mirrors, but at least you'll be able to block certain types of sites.
For this OpenDNS website blocking, you won't need to run fancy routers or firewalls.

There are a bunch of firewall/router operating systems that might be better suited than MikroTik's RouterOS - such as SmoothWall. I think you should be able to do everything you want with that too. We also have very good SmoothWall support here on myBroadband.

thank you very much for the reply!!!!! I'm looking into SmoothWall now