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Network Data Measuring Tool?

canadmos

Cake Tease
May 29, 2011
20,188
19,155
Canaderp
Does anyone know of a tool that I can use that will measure the amount of data that comes into my computer's NIC?

It would be awesome if it could keep track of the amount of data over a period of time, regardless if the computer restarts.

Reason why I need this, is because I only have 60gb of bandwidth to use each months and I constantly go over it. I need a way to better judge how much of that alloted bandwidth I use.

Thanks
 

$tinkle

Expert on blowing
Feb 12, 2003
14,591
6
i believe you pay for anything that comes to your router (possibly even further upstream, like a central office), so if you have whitelisting or other outside-the-wire packet-dropping defenses, you might get conflicting results from windows tools like networx or freemeter

snort & wireshark are fun to play with, especially if you're prone to prying into your neighbors' business
 

canadmos

Cake Tease
May 29, 2011
20,188
19,155
Canaderp
Wireshark is definitely interesting. Used it a bit last semester at school. About to learn a little about Snort and other's in my Linux course too.

The other reason why I want to measure this, is because I live in a house with other people too. I'm not the one who pays the internet bill, so it'd be nice to have some proof that I'm not the only person who is bumping the traffic over the 60gb limit.
 

$tinkle

Expert on blowing
Feb 12, 2003
14,591
6
The other reason why I want to measure this, is because I live in a house with other people too. I'm not the one who pays the internet bill, so it'd be nice to have some proof that I'm not the only person who is bumping the traffic over the 60gb limit.
before you start an irreparably harmful pissing match w/ your flatmates, might want to first shop around for a provider who gives a competitive fixed rate -- no max usage.

if these rates aren't competitive, consider it anyway & talk everyone into making up the difference by getting the smallest data plan on their smart phones & use wifi @home (won't consume data plan). if everyone chose a plan that's $20 cheaper, that could more than make up the delta in the next tier for the shared home inet.

and if _that's_ not an option, might be time to break out the pie charts at the next house mtg
 

canadmos

Cake Tease
May 29, 2011
20,188
19,155
Canaderp
^Perfect!

That seems to be working well so far, and includes pie charts!!


before you start an irreparably harmful pissing match w/ your flatmates, might want to first shop around for a provider who gives a competitive fixed rate -- no max usage.

if these rates aren't competitive, consider it anyway & talk everyone into making up the difference by getting the smallest data plan on their smart phones & use wifi @home (won't consume data plan). if everyone chose a plan that's $20 cheaper, that could more than make up the delta in the next tier for the shared home inet.

and if _that's_ not an option, might be time to break out the pie charts at the next house mtg
The problem is that this is actually my parents haha. I had to move back into the rents house to go back to college...

And around here there is basically only a three choices as far as ISP's go. There is the one we subscribe to, which offers quite fast speed but does not offer unlimited use. Another offers unlimited use, but is known to report and cooperate with inqueries on illegal Torrent use. The other uses DSL. We're stuck with **** no matter what.

And in another twist, I came home last night to find that our ISP sent a new router to use. Of course, the new router blows cock and is incredibly slow to respond. It takes about 5-10 seconds just to connect to the router with frequent disconnects, even when wired to the router.

Why fix something that isn't broken? :(

Tonight I am going to try to bridge a connection to one of my old routers and use that as the distribution/access point. Hopefully using as little of the services on that new craptacular router will help fix some of these issues.

What I need to do is set up a service that will track data usage to each known MAC address on the network. This way at the end of the month, I can produce those lovely pie charts and keep peace in the house.
 
Last edited:

$tinkle

Expert on blowing
Feb 12, 2003
14,591
6
And in another twist, I came home last night to find that our ISP sent a new router to use. Of course, the new router blows cock and is incredibly slow to respond. It takes about 5-10 seconds just to connect to the router with frequent disconnects, even when wired to the router.
might just need a firmware update