How to track amount of internet usage?

[Chips]

So I live in a student house with 3 others, and we're allowed 60GBs of combined downloads/uploads per month, with each subsequent GB used costing us $1.25. I've figured out how to track the amount of downloads/uploads per day, for all four of us total. Is there any way to track online how much each PC is using in dl/up? I feel like it's ridiculous that we're using almost 10GB a day, yet everyone claims they aren't using torrenting programs/downloading anything. Would watching videos on youtube/watching TV shows online/online ps3 cost about 10GB a day?

[Cephius]

It adds up fast, especially if your roommates frequently stream TV shows.

As for monitoring, it's a bit tricky since a bandwidth monitoring tool installed on a single PC will not only capture the internet traffic but anything sent to and from other computers/devices on your network, like the PS3. Your best bet is seeing if your router has any kind of reporting tool that can tell you where all the usage is coming from.

If that doesn't work, you can still try installing a network monitoring tool on the computers and just take into account that the data may not be 100% accurate. If someone is using more bandwidth than the others you should be able to tell.

[Yabby]

Tell your roommates to stop steaming porn and just download/reuse porn on their HD's. That alone will save you a lot of bandwidth. You guys are a bunch of college students so i know all 4 of you are doing it, and the one that says hes not is downloading the most of it.

[Chips]

As it turns out my router doesn't have anything that can monitor bandwidth usage. Yahoo Answers indicates that allocation of bandwidth to PS3 is extremely minimal, and steaming videos on things like Megavideo is ~500MB per 40 minute show, and Youtube is supposed to be like 100 or so MB per 10 minutes of HQ video. I'm thinking there's no way that this much video is being watched, so is it possible someone else is into our wireless usage? I don't know too much about this stuff, but the security measures we have: a network password and our PCs' physical addresses need to be registered. Is this enough?

[sruon]

What kind of encryption on the password? MAC Adresses can be spoofed...

[Chips]

I'm not sure what you mean by 'encryption'... There's a password that I set and that's about it.

[sruon]

When you set the password, you should be able to select the encryption type : WEP, WPA, WPA-PSK, WPA2.
Don't use WEP as it is really weak.

[Yabby]

Might want to make sure your friends didn't give your PW to someone also. I remember living in an apt with students around me and they were very conformable asking me if they can use my internet.

Edit: Also fuck whoever your getting your internet from, 15 GB per person... fuck that i pull that shit in a day.

[Chips]

Alright, thanks for the advice. I do believe it's set at WEP so I'll change it.

We get 60GB per month at about 40 a month in Canada. We can move up to 175GB/month, but I don't really want to pay $89/month plus mandatory $7/month router borrowing. We aren't even offered an unlimited package. I'd switch to a different company if this wasn't already the best deal in the city.

[Kaisha]

Your router should have a table listing current DHCP clients, so you can compare that with the number of wifi-enabled devices in the vicinity to see if someone is possibly leeching the network.

But yeah, get WEP off, that shit is stupidly easy to crack for anyone who knows how.

[Caiyuo]

I believe there's something very specific to what you're looking for in a supplement script for DD-WRT, but I don't know how comfortable you are with that or even how well it works in practice. I've been interested in trying it myself, though, so if things pan out I'll leave an update.

[Chips]

I'll definitely change the encryption from WEP, and no I don't know what DD-WRT, but if you get good results please let me know.

[Caiyuo]

This is what'd it look like on the assumption that it works: http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=81432

[Chips]

This is what'd it look like on the assumption that it works: http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=81432

Thanks for the link, but it required that you run Linux OS, and that's something that I do not have. damn

[bungiefan]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ntop

I imagine you could set up a Linux box between your modem and other computers to use as a router, and with this program you could measure network traffic to the internet for each MAC address, and thus each user.

The tools the ISP uses to track your usage are expensive. I dealt with this issue when going to school in Seward, Alaska where they also don't have an unlimited usage broadband package. In my case the limit was worse, 10 GB per month, and it was split between 9 of us. $5 per GB over the limit.

[Kaylia]

#1 Change the encryption to something more securate (make sure there is no leak)
#2 Ask them to install this on their pc. While they could in theory delete the history, it should be enough to make them realize they are wasting a ton of bandwitdth (if they are)
http://www.softperfect.com/products/networx/

[Syntex]

Alright, thanks for the advice. I do believe it's set at WEP so I'll change it.

We get 60GB per month at about 40 a month in Canada. We can move up to 175GB/month, but I don't really want to pay $89/month plus mandatory $7/month router borrowing. We aren't even offered an unlimited package. I'd switch to a different company if this wasn't already the best deal in the city.

Split it evenly 4 ways? 20ish a month is doable.

[Purrrfect]

I dealt with this issue when going to school in Seward, Alaska where they also don't have an unlimited usage broadband package. In my case the limit was worse, 10 GB per month, and it was split between 9 of us. $5 per GB over the limit.

Holyshitraep!