• Networking

  • Tool to check granularity in the internet consumption?

Hello Guys,

I have a network question please:

Problem:
Don't know where my internet download quota is being spent on

Description:
- At home we have 3 android devices and 2 laptops and 1 PC and 1 Smart TV connected to the ADSL router ( 2 via cables all others wireless ).
- A couple of times each month a sudden peak in the download consumption at a round 4 Gbytes per day ( The connection is a healthy 2mbpsDown).
- I tried several times to detect what is being downloaded automatically, but failed to do so ( Windows updates, VGA drivers, etc... nothing could be this huge).
- I cannot detect the day that this is going to reproduce
- I checked and no one has hacked into my wireless router. All the devices are ours.

Question:
- I need a tool that could give me the granularity of the downloads. There a plenty working software that monitors the Total downloads on the router.
But I cannot find any that could gives me form where there huge downloads are being fetched :(

I already contacted my ISP to see if they can help with the traffic destination, but they won;t provide suck service.

Any working software out there that can help? ( I can sacrifice a dedicated android device in case needed)

Thanks
I think the best solution would be at the router level, you can install something like DD-WRT on your wireless router.

PS: in case you are using your ADSL modem directly, you can get a TP-LINK router, and use it's SSID as main, and turn of SSID broadcast in your ADSL modem, so you can track consumption there.
Maybe you can have your router mirror all packets to your computer, and have a software analyse them there.
Or you can put it in promiscuous mode so that all packets (including wireless) are forwarded to all ports, so you you can use your PC to analyse them.
Another thing is have a PC act as a router, sit between your modem and your LAN.
The main problem is that proper software to analyze consumption usually cannot be installed on the router. If you get a more advanced (and expensive) router, maybe.
But on the PC you can find some software to do that. So the trick is to have your PC get all packets from the network, because by default you can't see packets from other machines on the network.
PS: Yes, maybe DD-WRT can help, either in sending the packets to your PC, or already giving you more detailed statistics directly from your router.
On my router I can enable "statistics" and it will measure packets and bytes by device, so I can find out who is using most of the volume.
Thanks guys
ironman wroteI think the best solution would be at the router level, you can install something like DD-WRT on your wireless router.

PS: in case you are using your ADSL modem directly, you can get a TP-LINK router, and use it's SSID as main, and turn of SSID broadcast in your ADSL modem, so you can track consumption there.
I'll leave that as my final solution as it needs a budget, and it takes place to put it. Do you recommend any specific TP-Link series (that I can purchase in lebanon) on which the firmware works flawlessly ?

@Rolf
I am not that tech savvy when it comes to networking but I kinda understood your suggestion
As a first step. I need to find the granularity software that can do it only on my PC win8.1. The problem is granularity, because I am 100% sure is that it is a background process not some common URL
Try "NetLimiter 3" (not free though).
I use it to control the available speed for individual applications/processes. You can even view details on the file/program that is causing an Internet activity (right click -> show info).
You can even set up filters to limit the up/down bandwidth for a certain group of IPs or IP ranges.
eliminator wrote
@Rolf
I am not that tech savvy when it comes to networking but I kinda understood your suggestion
As a first step. I need to find the granularity software that can do it only on my PC win8.1. The problem is granularity, because I am 100% sure is that it is a background process not some common URL
I know what granularity means, but I'm not sure what you mean by it when you use it.
If you want to find out what process is causing bandwidth consumption, then you have to install software on your PC, such as NetLimiter, which I remember using a long time ago, and which worked well, not only for showing which processes use what, but for limited and blocking them. Windows Firewall can do the blocking part as well.

If you want to find out what devices use your bandwidth, then you usually want a bandwidth report by IP. Many (cheap) routers do that, but it's a simple ip (or mac address) and consumption list, it does not give you any idea about the app, protocol, or target addresses.

There is a capture software called Wireshark, and it will capture network packets (with all their info) for you to analyze. You can probably use it for statistics by adding some module to it, but that's very advanced.

I think there would be other simple software to do that but you'll have to find them yourself as I'm not up-to-date on the matter and don't have any name or such tip to give you.

If you're serious about monitoring and controlling traffic in and out of your network, I suggest you use a PC as gateway/router, and only use ADSL box as a modem only. I'm sure there is software for PC to help you do that (but expect spending some time on this). Not sure about android, it's possible though.
a year later
Anybody found a tool or something?I got an old Zhone modem,a tg585 wirless router and a laptop that nobody use.Is there a way to monitor each user's internet consumption with any of these?