Network Bandwidth Monitor

[voorhees]

I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations for a tool to monitor my network bandwidth usage. I do not care that much about my usage on my LAN between computers and such, mainly just usage from/to the internet though my router. I will probably never reach my limit, however I would like to monitor it. Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

[hemicuda]

With Netflix now on my xbox (less the Sony releases, stupid corp games again) this would be nice information to have. Comcast has a rumored limit of 250GB/mon and with a 10mbit pipe one could conceivably hit that mark. Guess it's time to poke around the n*x toolkits and see if such a monitor exists.

[tmiranda]

I like DU Meter - It's not free but it works very well. It will show you real time traffic data plus it keeps track of total uploads and downloads.

http://www.dumeter.com

[voorhees]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

I like DU Meter - It's not free but it works very well. It will show you real time traffic data plus it keeps track of total uploads and downloads.

http://www.dumeter.com

Thanks for the response. I had not seen DU Meter in my searches. However, it does not look like it will monitor total LAN internet traffic, but just the traffic on the computer it is installed on. Is that correct? I now have three computers running through my router and would like to get total uploads and downloads to/from the internet from all three, or the total traffic through my cable modem.

[Wheemer]

If you have a router that can run the custom firmware from http://www.dd-wrt.com it has a total WAN traffic graph feature.

[darkside]

most home routers do not have the necessary code to allow you to monitor WAN throughput. so you are either left with trying to find a custom code that will allow it or putting in a proxy server.

[voorhees]

Originally Posted by darkside

most home routers do not have the necessary code to allow you to monitor WAN throughput. so you are either left with trying to find a custom code that will allow it or putting in a proxy server.

With a proxy server could you capture all LAN throughput? Is there a down side to having a proxy server? I have a little experience with a reverse proxy server, but for a totally different purpose.

[darkside]

Proxy server you could capture all traffic going to the internet and back. Only downside is some latency due to the proxy server. However that said with the power of today's machines and the fact that this is for a home network it shouldn't be any type of an issue.

[jm9843]

Originally Posted by Wheemer

If you have a router that can run the custom firmware from http://www.dd-wrt.com it has a total WAN traffic graph feature.

Seconded. I just loaded dd-wrt on my linksys wrt54g because of the new Netflix integration on the Xbox 360 and Comcast's 250 GB limit.

Under the "Status" page dd-wrt provides total WAN in/out for the current month (with the ability to review previous months) and allows you to hover your mouse over individual days.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by jm9843

Under the "Status" page dd-wrt provides total WAN in/out for the current month (with the ability to review previous months) and allows you to hover your mouse over individual days.

What firmware version are you running? I'm still on v2.4. The bandwidth usage feature stops working for me after the router has been running for a week. I can reboot and it will start working again, but it just stops working again after about a week. Have you had any problems like that?

[voorhees]

Originally Posted by Wheemer

If you have a router that can run the custom firmware from http://www.dd-wrt.com it has a total WAN traffic graph feature.

Wheemer, I really thought I was onto something with your suggestion. After looking through the info pretty carefully, DD-WRT is not compatible with my router. I have a Netgear WGT624 v3. It is specifically listed as an incompatible device due to is Marvell based chipset and only 2MB of RAM. Thanks so much for the suggestion. I wish it would have worked. Maybe it is time for a new router.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by voorhees

Maybe it is time for a new router.

I'm happy with my Linksys WRT150N router, for a reasonably cheap 802.11n router. It runs DD-WRT quite nicely, except for this weird bandwidth monitoring bug (which, come to think of it, sort of negates your reason for wanting a new router). I suspect its more of a general DD-WRT bug than a WRT150N problem. I saw other reports of this bug, but I haven't seen anything indicating whether or not v2.4SP1 fixes it. I should just try it, but at the same time everything I need is working fine right now and I don't want to do anything to anger the computer gods.

There's a somewhat decent workaround. You can tell the router to reboot itself every X days (or at a set time each week). So, I could tell my router to reboot every Sunday at 4AM, when I'm pretty much certain to be asleep. That used to be an important feature in DD-WRT, since it seemed like things would slow down due over time without reboots- and you could notice it on your systems through increased latency. The newer version of DD-WRT don't seem to have that problem though.