A program to monitor bandwidth usage?

[Comdrpopnfresh]

I'm at school again, and living in the dorm means having better internet access than at home, but it comes with the price of bandwidth limits. I'm looking for a program to tally up my bandwidth usage, preferably at my router so that using my laptop and desktop are both accounted for. It'd be even better if there were a way to limit connection rates (so windows doesn't go rogue when I'm out, and blow my bandwidth installing language packs), and/or to cap total bandwidth at a certain level.
The school monitors bandwidth, but the statistics servers only update a few times a day; allowing for a program download or updates to wreck my productivity for the week.

Thanks in advance,

Popnfresh

 

[Crusty]

Both Tomato and DD-WRT have bandwidth graphs you can use that will show realtime and historical information, if you routers supports either one of those.

 

[Engineer]

Originally posted by: Crusty
Both Tomato and DD-WRT have bandwidth graphs you can use that will show realtime and historical information, if you routers supports either one of those.

Yep, and if the router doesn't, you use a program like Netlimiter monitor on each one. The totals will have to be manually added though (from each PC).

 

[JackMDS]

http://codebox.org.uk/controller?page=bitmeter

 

[dman]

Also an option, NetMeter

There's a 'Totals' tab and you can set it to startup automatically.

On the negative side it doesn't appear to distinguish between LAN Traffic and WAN Traffic, so, I'd recommend a router with Tomato or DD-WRT.

 

[Jamsan]

With DD-WRT / Tomato (or any SNMP enabled router), you can run PRTG. There's a free version available for up to 10 sensors (interfaces)

 

[Comdrpopnfresh]

I have a netgear wgr-614 v6. How do I know if I can use wither DD-WRT / Tomato, or if it is snmp enabled?

 

[dman]

www.dd-wrt.com has a supported hardware database. The WGR 614 appears to not be supported. Tomato and OpenWRT generally runs on the same hardware so it's doubtful either of those would work.

You can check with the vendor's documentation (Netgear) to see if they support SNMP, but I doubt it. Most consumer routers did not, unless that's changed recently. I haven't checked in a while.

There are deals on DD-WRT routers quite frequently. Buffalo makes a few that Newegg sells,usually in the $30-40 range depending on rebates and free shipping offers. Some are harder to flash/upgrade than others.