Monitoring Web Traffic

[MoFunk]

I have 4 computers at home and would like to monitor where they are all talking to on the net. They are all mine so I am not snooping on anyone. I use smoothwall as my router and it has an activity graph. I am seeing some rather large spikes and it is getting more and more frequent. I have run antivirus on all pc and adaware and they are all clean. Where I work we have a product called network observer and it tells where all the packets are coming from and where they are going. Is there anything like that for home use that does not cost too much? Thanks.

I was also thinking of loading up a 30 day trial of surf control to see which one is doing all the talking.

Thanks for any help.

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: MoFunk
I have 4 computers at home and would like to monitor where they are all talking to on the net. They are all mine so I am not snooping on anyone. I use smoothwall as my router and it has an activity graph. I am seeing some rather large spikes and it is getting more and more frequent. I have run antivirus on all pc and adaware and they are all clean. Where I work we have a product called network observer and it tells where all the packets are coming from and where they are going. Is there anything like that for home use that does not cost too much? Thanks.

I was also thinking of loading up a 30 day trial of surf control to see which one is doing all the talking.

Thanks for any help.

There is software based packet sniffing that is free. Ethereal is one that comes to mind.

 

[MoFunk]

Thanks Dave.... I will give it a look.

 

[Boscoh]

You can download the trial of Etherpeek NX. It's a little more robust than Ethereal (but its hella expensive). www.wildpackets.com I think

 

[n0cmonkey]

You can setup a proxy on your smoothwall box. Squid's a PITA, but it might be worth it.

 

[Coolkid]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
You can setup a proxy on your smoothwall box. Squid's a PITA, but it might be worth it.

Smoothwall already runs Squid out of the box

I have just what you want to setup, already running on my Smoothie
Have a look here for howto set it up: http://community.smoothwall.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2894

If you have any problems, feel free to msg me on MSN

 

[MoFunk]

Thanks Coolkid, I have been reading over that thread and will give it a shot once I get some free time. I have been playing around with ethereal and it has been interesting to see all the network traffic that flies around.

 

[Cheetah8799]

That smoothwall mod is one of a few that I have on my list of things to do... I've been too busy playing computer games to want to mess with my firewall though.

I don't think it lets you could based on traffic type though, only total in/out per IP. Still useful information though.

 

[mboy]

How about setting up a syslog server? Kiwi is free.