BANDWIDTH MONITORING - Please Help !!!

[BLK]

Hi, we have a caped ADSL Line in the office, someone in our office or someone with access from the outside is using our Cap within a few days, is there a reliable tool that doesnt need to be installed as a client to monitor each PC's bandwidth utilization. with a simple report at the end of the day/week/month with the IP Address/Hostname. I've seen some tools and spend alot of bandwidth to download it but is not realy doing the job.

 

[DigiTechie]

Hi, you can try netlimiter. It tells you exactly where the traffic is coming from and where it's going.

 

[bboy]

is there a reliable tool that doesnt need to be installed as a client to monitor each PC's bandwidth utilization

Hi, you can try netlimiter. It tells you exactly where the traffic is coming from and where it's going.

FAIL ANSWER

 

[Rodent-Boy]

a caped ADSL Line

Caped? Like Superman? How fast does it fly?

 

[BLK]

Netlimiter doesnt allow me to monitor other ip's without them knowing that i will be monitoring the machine ?>>>
any other ideas ?

 

[bboy]

what router do you have?

 

[medicnick83]

This is a difficult question to answer... the only real way of knowing (and knowing details that can help) is setting up say a Linux box and using the Linux box (shorewall, etc etc) as your router.
My boss does this for alot of our clients and basically, he can log everything and graph everything (bandwidth etc) - that's one sure fire way, if you want more info on this, PM me and I'll get you in contact with him as I'm not sure of the costs involved.

 

[diabolus]

Well you'll need a "central point of entry" somewhere. Either the router itself or a PROXY server, then you can put some serious networking monitor on this server since all traffic pass through it.

I'd say a proxy is worth looking into, start with something simple like this (this is VERY easy to setup in Windows) : FreeProxy http://www.handcraftedsoftware.org/index.php?page=5 (this works on windows if you don't want to go and get a new box and all)

What does it do ?
FreeProxy is professional Freeware which channels requests for internet pages via a single computer and enables many computers to share an internet connection. If you have dial-up internet access, you can use the Demand Dial or Auto-Dial feature to dial up the internet either when it detects you want to access the internet (demand) or maintain a strict schedule of connection times (auto). Otherwise is works with Cable/Broadband.

Reporting
There are 4 reports which can each be optionally switched on or off.

* Access report: detailing access violations
* Detailed log of web sites accessed
* Summary report of access by user
* Debug report


Filtering
*Allow access to the internet at certain times
*Allow some users access to some sites
*Allow some users access to a selection of sites at specific times.
* Allow the import of ban lists to ban based on URL or IP address

That's just a free tool, but there's obviously serious professional stuff out there, but i'd say if you just want to quick solution for "proof of concept" worth a shot.

Then you can tell everyone they need to setup this proxy on their system if they want a connection or tough luck. Then you lock down your router by restricting the access to it directly forcing everyone to go via the server/proxy.

 

[Conradl]

Use Untangle. Plug the ADSL into the Untangle box (Wan), and the switch connecting the PCs into the Untangle (LAN). You can then monitor traffic....

 

[BLK]

can you use untangle on a VM ? we have a WinXP FTP Server, that we can use to run untangle on as a VM >?

 

[Willie Trombone]

If you have a spare box, and a some time (or just setup a virtual machine), install Smoothwall and use the built in squid (set it up as a transparent proxy). Then setup smoothwall as your router - you can route traffic from smoothwall to your regular router easily. What I did was change the IP of my router and set the smoothwall box IP as my router's old IP. All traffic then routes via smoothwall and is logged. You get usage per IP including current bandwidth logs etc. Very useful. I had the same issue and solved it this way. You need to take some time to set it up.

Some notes for smoothwall: Green interface is the internal interface (the LAN side). Red interface is the external interface (the router side). I had two NICs in the machine hosting smoothwall (it was installed as a virtual machine - use sun virtual box if you like). Connect the router to the smoothwall red interface adapter and the office hub to the green interface adapter.

Get smoothwall here:
http://www.smoothwall.org/get/

 

[BLK]

thanks for the suggestion - will try the Smoothwall route - it seems like the solution, will test and get back if i need help >

 

[Willie Trombone]

Shout if you get stuck. And once setup, try not to potter too much, it can be tempremental at times. Don't expect too much from the free version, but it will serve your purpose. You can also connect an ADSL modem directly to the smoothwall box and have it handle the dial-up/disconnect if you like. You can also use a single NIC in the smoothwall box and just have the router on the same lan segment, but change your DHCP server to offfer the smoothwall box as the default route. If your router is the dhcp server, then perhaps even turn that off and turn DHCP on for the smoothwall box.

 

[Rocket-Boy]

Smoothwall works very nicely for that.
You have to install bandview though if you want to see the amounts of data being used by each user. Its pretty simple to do though.

 

[BLK]

i use another box for DHCP, dont ask me why, but we have to, also regarding bandview: do i load that on the same box as smoothwall ?, and the VM's recommended HDD space ?

 

[Willie Trombone]

HDD space: 2Gb-4Gb is plenty. Yes, bandview is a smoothwall addon - read about it in the forum on the link I gave you. I don't think you need bandview to see what each IP is using bandwidth wise. Also, don't confuse the red/green interfaces bandwidth usage since they handle all the traffic to / from smoothwall and perhaps some non internet traffic. They should give you an indication of overall bandwidth usage, but it's not guaranteed it's correct.

 

[Conradl]

can you use untangle on a VM ? we have a WinXP FTP Server, that we can use to run untangle on as a VM >?

Yip, it will work. Regarding smoothwall, I have used both untangle and smoothwall and preferred untangle. If you do test untangle, just remember not to download it using a file manager - for some reason it breaks it....

 

[F111]

we are testing elitecore 24online think that will do the job

 

[Willie Trombone]

But Smoothwall is *free*

 

[hilton]

But Smoothwall is *free*

Does this version work purely as a proxy or do you need to configure it as a firewall/router device?