Network Bandwidth Monitoring

[ccnp2be]

Hi team,

Does anybody know of a good free/shareware program that would allow me to monitor internet bandwidth usage on a per IP basis. I have someone who is interested finding out how much bandwidth a specific IP is hogging (listening to music, downloading crap etc.)

Thanks in advance,

Imran

 

[JackMDS]

Link: Can I Monitor my LAN, control the usage of the Internet, and Network Resources by other computers from my main computer?

 

[ccnp2be]

Thanks for the link Jack.

However, I am more interested in 'freeware/shareware software' that would enable me to do this, maybe via utilizing SNMP or sniffing packets on the network.

...

Ty again

 

[JackMDS]

The issue is not software.

In order to control the traffic you need a Server that all the traffic goes through.

You can not control traffic in a peer to peer type of Win98-XP network.

Linux is free.

Link: Linux Router.

There is Software for controlling bandwidth through Win2000 Server, but it is very expensive.

 

[ccnp2be]

Originally posted by: ccnp2be
Hi team,

..........allow me to monitor internet bandwidth usage on a per IP basis.

Imran

 

[goldboyd]

What does the topology of the network look like?

 

[ccnp2be]

This particular Network consists of around 20 nodes. 15~ PC's, 3~ MACs, 2~ Printers connected in a star topology (terminating into a single switch to creat a central backplane for the entire network), the switch uplinks to a SonicWALL SOHO firewall which then goes into the Internet Router. SDSL line with a Netopia 7200 Router. 1.5/1.5 line. An App. and a File Server on the LAN.

 

[cmetz]

ccnp2be, if you have a managed switch, you can see per-port bandwidth that way and even collect and graph it with MRTG. Not exactly what you want, but probably achieves the same effect - finding out who the pig is.

Another possibility is to see if the SonicWALL supports per-flow traffic logging - higher end boxes do, and SonicWALL just might. This might not give you exactly what you want to know, but at least getting a general idea of who the heavy users are and what they're doing might be very helpful.

 

[ccnp2be]

Sounds great. Thank you for the guidance.