Download Monitoring

Hi,


I have moved in with my new friends to a flat. We often end up using your download limits and have to pay to airtel for extra bandwidth. This often results bad understanding when it comes during the month end and our bill arrives.


I need a software which will monitor the dowload usage which each device that connects to the modem through wifi does. Is there any software or incase any other modem which will work with Airtel connections and comes with a inbuit options to do it. At the max i will need to monitor 15 devices (the phones, tab and laptops).


It enough if the i get the total usage made by each and every device.


Narendran Kishore

Your problem doing it at the device end (apart from collating all the results together) is that you have a mix of device types and things like smartphones won't necessarily have much in the way of options.

You would need to find a router that is able to keep track or use a PC as a gateway device with software on it (but that probably means building a dedicated Linux device probably with 2 network cards).

Afraid I don't have experience of routers that would do this. Are you in the UK or is Airtel an non-UK supplier? I am assuming you are not from UK. And is Airtel a mobile network in which case the router requirements could be different?

Post deleted by David_W

In reply to a post by David_W:

In reply to a post by ian72:

You would need to find a router that is able to keep track or use a PC as a gateway device with software on it (but that probably means building a dedicated Linux device probably with 2 network cards).

The option I use is the FreeBSD based pfSense, which is free of charge. You don't necessarily need two network cards - one VLAN capable network card (ideally an Intel server grade card, though lesser cards will do, depending on your requirements) and a VLAN capable network switch is more flexible. The pfSense forums contain lots of wisdom on the various options.

So far as monitoring traffic per device goes, pfSense supports Netflow via the pfflowd package, which you can use with external Netflow monitoring software. As an alternative, the pfSense ntop package may do all that you need on the pfSense box.

If you have a PC with a couple of network interfaces, you can experiment with pfSense for free, though you will need a spare hard disk partition to experiment with packages, as you cannot use packages when running from the live CD.

I'm sorry, I may be thick, but I do have a First Class Honours in Electrical/Electronic Engineering from Bristol University back in 1970, (the only one awarded that year), but the above post is complete mumbo jumbo to me, and, I suspect, others. Can you explain in more detail?

It's a router/firewall that sits between your network and the internet, and can measure data flow besides other things.

Post deleted by David_W

I'm sorry, but I have to agree with Stevenage_Neil. Your discussions are too heavily overcomplcated and are probably not much relevance to him. Altho' highly computer literate, I would not at all feel comfortable trying to stick some intermediate gubbins in my network just for monitoring purposes.

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

I'm sorry, but I have to agree with Stevenage_Neil. Your discussions are too heavily overcomplcated and are probably not much relevance to him. Altho' highly computer literate, I would not at all feel comfortable trying to stick some intermediate gubbins in my network just for monitoring purposes.

The "annoying" thing to me is that I worked for Xerox for 27yrs and was actively engaged in the development of Ethernet, (and variants thereof)..........all these modern acronyms, to those of us not in the know, are confusing! KISS

OK, then - over to you. I've tidied up by deleting the answers you rejected.

Yeah, a technical post in "Technical Discussion". Whatever next?