Monitor Wi-Fi usage

BroHay

BroHay

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To the computer guru's on the tech side.....

I have satellite internet provided from Wildblue (Exede) and I'm having an issue with vast amounts of Data being used when no computers are being used. I'm on a limited plan 27GB/month and it is just vanishing. They provide a way to get close to usage, but it is usually 48 hours behind and I would like to try and get something that would be realtime.

There are 3 laptops and two ipads that can connect to my Wifi, and I'm trying to find out a way to be able to monitor individual use (or combined) for the desktop/laptops mainly.

I have measures in place for android devices, and I believe the same can be used for iPads, but not quite sure for the lap/desktop computers. Even if I have to go through and calculate the usage from each machine is fine, I'm just trying to find if there is something else going on.....

Thanks,
Adam
 
for the boy's iPads, I keep everything turned off (they even know not to enable). They do not have any games that are dependent upon being connected to the net, and they are not subscribed to any of the services that try to always hound you to play with others (for gaming).......at least not that I've found (and I do as little as possible with Apple so maybe I'm missing something???)
 
I'm not concerned with others getting on the net for my closet neighbor is over 1/2 mile away. Wi-fi is secured with password and not an open network.
 
With the right equipment that is not very expensive, somebody can tap into your wi-fi even a half mile away. Make sure you also turn off your devices.
 
take a look at your wifi setup.... I know with my router, I can make it so only certain Mac addresses can sign on.... Once that's enabled, I can view usage by MAC address.... YMMV, my modem/router is a Motorola Surfboard.
 
most routers can limit traffic just like this one (Im running netgear 3700), however I think one of your laptop might have been infected with some kind of packet exchange program(s). Spyboot will find most of unwanted software Trojan horses.

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I have a Linksys wrt160n router, and it does not appear to lend itself to monitoring data usage as your Netgear shows above.

Scanning computers to see if anything has made it on that was not meant to be installed.

Adam
 
clean bill of health. Only one item popped up, and it was from a botched install of a program that was within the past 72 hours, and this has been going on for alot longer than that.

so, I'll continue to grab the shovel and keep digging......
 
Wireshark is a packet sniffer for windows. It will tell you what is using your bandwidth an a single PC. If you're on a hub, you can see traffic from other machines connected to the hub too.

Sent from my Galaxy S3 using Tapatalk 4
 
Your Linksys should have some counters on it? Look at the WAN link, there should be some statistics on that interface which will give you the aggregate inbound and outbound for all your devices.

If anyone is running a torrent client for example, that could be uploading in the background 24/7. Some of those things are set to minimize instead of exit when you close them so they continue running in the background or in your taskbar even though you think you've exited.
 
I looked under the "admin" settings and it will give you various IP addresses and a few other logs, but nothing of what I'm trying to find.

Two programs keep popping up as contenders but mixed reviews as to how they take over. There is a possibility of the very program adding to the data total with all the chatter back and forth.

Back to the learning curve......

Sent from: GS4
 
I've just had a quick look through the user manual for your device http://cna1.upc.edu.cn/cisco/tools/WRT160N_ug.pdf and there is nothing obvious there regarding the information you're interested in (WAN link statistics).

Depending on what value you place on your own time trying to gather & collate this information from multiple sources, a different router might be the go.
 
Alright, slowly making headway, but I ha e another question to bounce.

Latest routers are being geared towards allowing devices to share. Does anyone have any ideas on how I might be able to set things up where I have a hard drive to share video/music/?? ?

A friend provided me with a couple of pretty decent desktops and trying to find a way to where I do not have to move my laptop everywhere.



Sent from: GS4
 
T84A said:
How about a USB drive? A lot of the new routers have USB ports.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that is what is making me explore the option. I do not however have any experience with this in that the device is able to access the drive through some feature in the router, or if it requires something more.

I put windows 8 on one of the the towers to play around with it and it is whats prompting me to explore.

Adam
 
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