How to monitor the network traffic on a router?

Question

Here's my current network set-up: we have 3 users connecting to a Thomson Gateway router (TG585 v8) provided by my ISP. We are connecting over an ADSL line.

The problem is that we have a limited data allowance (60GB) and we always exceed it.

I would like to monitor how much traffic each computer makes. The best solution would be to install a software on the router (like OpenWRT) which would monitor how much traffic each computer makes. But I couldn't find any replacement firmware that would support my router.

The other solution would be to install a software on each machine and then collect all the data at the end of the mount. But that's not a very good think to do. Plus, the users can always shut down the application.

Any suggestions?

Solution

You could install a bridge between the router and the internal network. All traffic would flow through the bridge allowing you to temporarily capture packets with something like Wireshark which has stellar packet filtering options. I would look for the biggies: Torrenting protocols, FTP, etc and drill down from there.

Comments

[barlop]

i've used the analogx software, it's per computer, as I guess you know. But the second link about using analogx software looks really good and comments mention that that solution doesn't scale so well and suggests "...using a solution like Smoothwall on an old PC to act as a gateway"...(to monitor bandwidth and you can use QoS too so P2P doesn't hog bandwidth)" That was written in 2007 so you might use torrents instead and complain.. QoS may be useful..in addition to monitoring bandwidth.

[Kennet Celeste]

what if all devices are connected with wlan?