Who used up the bandwidth/allocated traffic for the month ?

[patteo]

I know someone who is one of four students living in a house.

They share a wireless network and based on the ISP plan they subscribed to, they have an allocated traffic of 50GB of high speed traffic per month and after that, the speed drops dramatically.

So each pays 25% of the cost.

What they have now is a situation of the 50gb being used up too quickly and everyone thinks it is someone else other than they themselves being responsible. Well obviously someone is visiting www.youtube.com etc too often.

Does anyone know of a freeware traffic monitoring tool that each can install on their computer that will track their respective usage so that there is a fair allocation between the various users that will lead to a peaceful co-existence. Preferably, there should be a traffic report that each can print out to support their case.

I recognize that such reports can of course be manipulated. But I will just assume that no one tries to beat the software. Just that all each one needs is a reliable "fuel" meter so that they know they are using up too much juice.

Any suggestions would be most appreciated.

[mouser]

great question, look forward to seeing the answer.

Just to clarify for others, as i understand it what you have is multiple computers hooked up to a router,
And you want some sort of report that you can look at, at the end of the month or whatever, showing how much upload/download bandwidth has been used on each computer.

The solution could be a centralized program or a separate program running on each PC, and we are assuming that:
1) tampering with data is not really a concern
2) it would be useful if each PC could display its usage so that the user knows how much of the bandwidth they have consumed.

Nice idea, i can see how this would be useful.

[johnk]

The free version of Netlimiter should do what you need (monitoring and a stats report).
http://www.netlimiter.com

[manimatters]

Ive used NetNak (http://www.nakware.com/netnak/index.htm) for this purpouse, It even has daily and monthly warnings when the data recieved goes above a certain limit you set. But it isnt freeware

[f0dder]

Btw, if it's wireless, make sure the network is encrypted so it's not abused by anybody else.

And 50 gigs of traffic, hmm... somebody's gotta be p2p'ing (ok, perhaps ~420 megs per person per day doesn't require p2p'ing, but still.)

[justice]

anyone playing second life? doesn't have to be p2ping you can use dozens of GB if you play SL more than a few hours a night and teleport around a lot.

[Carol Haynes]

DUMeter (not free) logs all your traffic (in and out) and gives you reports, running totals etc.

[app103]

I use Netmeter and I love how it logs usage and estimates what your projected total for the month will be (based on how much you have used already and your current downloading speed) .

It does a nice job of logging daily, weekly, monthy totals...alerts for when you get near your limit, alerts if the projected total will go over your limit, so you can slow down and stay under your limit.

It is actually quite easy to go over 50G with normal usage and that many people. All by myself, I can easily come close to that mark with streaming audio & google/youtube vids. (I am glad my ISP doesn't have bandwidth limits.)

[Carol Haynes]

Netmeter looks very nice - remarkably similar to DUMeter (except for the price )

[icekin]

I would suggest a 2 part solution:

1) Install Netmeter on each machine to allow the user to know their own bandwidth usage. But, each user can reset this and hence erase the records or simply exit the program before a heavy download. Hence, part 2 :

2) Configure the router and set up a bandwidth limiting rule for each allotted IP address on the network. Make sure that the IP is assigned static per MAC address so that each machine's IP always stays constant. When a person reaches within 80% of their allowed limit, lower their speed so that they stay within the limit. PortForward has many guides on port forwarding and configuring several brands and models of routers..

[patteo]

I use Netmeter and I love how it logs usage and estimates what your projected total for the month will be (based on how much you have used already and your current downloading speed) .

-app103 (April 17, 2008, 05:59 PM)

Thanks app103 for the info on Netmeter - it looks good.

I would suggest a 2 part solution:
2) Configure the router and set up a bandwidth limiting rule for each allotted IP address on the network. Make sure that the IP is assigned static per MAC address so that each machine's IP always stays constant. When a person reaches within 80% of their allowed limit, lower their speed so that they stay within the limit. PortForward has many guides on port forwarding and configuring several brands and models of routers..

-icekin (April 24, 2008, 05:48 AM)

Thanks icekin for Part 2 about configuring the router.
Would appreciate if you could just check the link for PortForward - I think there's something wrong with it.