Monitoring employee bandwidth usage?

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MisterBigglesworth

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Hiya all,

Ok, so I have been asked by someone about the above topic. Im not sure how to reply, so hopefully someone can help? At a company, employee use ADSL for internet connection. There are a few logon accounts for the ADSL connection. Is there software avail that can tell how much bandwidth was used for the logon account, and which windows user used the logon account, and how much was used for that logon account, for that windows user?

I know its a kinda noob question..but Im not very clued up in this field, so all help and info will be greatly appreciated ;)
 
How is the ADSL connection being shared? (First guess: the Telkom Mega100 router supplied with ADSL, with everyone sharing it as a gateway.)
How are these 'logon accounts' managed? (No guesses.)

What I would do is put a SmoothWall firewall in front of the ADSL, and use the Advanced Proxy mod, with every windows user logging in to the proxy using their Windows login (assuming this is based on AD). This involves no software cost, and can run on an old Pentium machine, though it's advisable to have at least 256MB of RAM in it.
 
Hi,

Yeah, its via an ADSL router. Logon accounts, most people have access to them, so they use one that gets given to them. So its not really managed at all. The other issue is they are not very comouter clued up...Im thinking they need to get a IT chap in and set this up properly...cos there really is no easy solution here. You agree?
 
Get an IT guy in, but not one who is going to try to sell you the world to make his name look good. Get someone decent who checks out well and has good references. For all the good IT guys, there are a lot of chancers and con artists

Doing what you want will take some time and effort, and changes will made that will cause some users to need to be trained a bit.

The sooner it's done the better, since having adsl like it currently is, is asking for chaos and tons of used cap.
 
Yes

You can install an RSAWeb Internet Gateway and Firewall manager.....

Most detailed reporting you'll ever get ....

Send me a mail and I'll quote you :)

allan at rsaweb dot co za :D

Or send me a PM :)
 
Proxy server in front of the routers. People log onto the proxy when using the internet. The proxy will have logs with an indication of who went to which site, and downloaded how much at that site. There are a lot of howto's on the squid proxy server. Some kind of log analysis software would be useful too. Sure you will be able to find something (google or freshmeat.net).

Also have a look at the RIC Act. Get your employees signatures on a contract that indicate that they are aware that their internet usage are monitored. Very useful to have when disciplinary action are taken against employees. They should understand that their username and password should not be given to anybody else, as they will be held responsible for any misuse.
 
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Hi,

Ok...after some digging from said family member, got more info outta them. Found out that they are running MWeb ADSL. All users are on a network, and the internet connection it setup to use the MWeb ADSL connection. So there is really only 1 ADSL internet account which they all use (and its setup to run via their LAN).

The problem they have, is that someone is using a lot of the bandwidth and they cant figure out who it is at their company. So they need some kinda usage monitor to log which computer / network user is downloading what, and how much they using etc.

I dont think they have a proxy server or anything like that as the company is small (30 odd people). They just have one central network server that acts as a file server, and also has the users network accounts setup on etc.

Cant seem to find anything really for this thing, think I need to do more searching. Thanks for the replies so far ;)

Cheers
 
I'd install Netlimiter (windows shareware) on all the machines, configure remote access, and then terminate & remove NLClient.exe from each once installation is complete so there's no client interface on the machine. It will then run just the service without the agent and the average computer user won't even know it's there -- then remotely connect to the machine from a master pc and monitor/throttle usage from there. It's by far the most powerful and useful bandwidth management application for Windows that i've worked with... can check or limit each PROCESS's usage, remotely even. I'd recommend that. Otherwise if you know linux, go for a linux firewall with dhcp & transparent squid cache and generate stats for each IP - That route is significantly more complicated however...
 
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CrazyFig said:
How about using SASA ADSL Statistics Analyser?[/url]
Click to expand...
Assuming each machine has it's own ADSL account rather than a star-topology shared gateway system, yeah this would work. This app baisically just collects an adsl account's usage stats from the ISP webpage and shows it in an application window, right?
 
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