Tracking Broadband usage

How does a multi-PC household best track what is eating up their monthly
download/upload quotas?

My ISP (local, wireless-based) has told me that I am running above my
quota, but does not offer any way for their users to track their usage
for themselves. I am reluctant to ditch them (it's not many ISPs where
the MD rings you back on Christmas Day when you report a problem!) but I
do need to work out why my usage has soared.

How best I can do this? My router - Draytek 2900VG - supports SNMP,
although documentation on setting that up seems very thin.

Any suggestions on modestly-priced (or free) software that is reasonably
quick to set up, and which will ideally let me spot not only how much of
the throughput is coming from each PC, but which websites or other
applications are the big users?

John Geddes
Derbyshire

John Geddes wrote:

> How does a multi-PC household best track what is eating up their monthly
> download/upload quotas?

I've wondered myself, I too have a Draytek, albeit an older 2600 but the
status page refers to blocks and packets rather that MBs and GBs.

I think you should have a go at the SysLog setup from the Vigor's
configurations screen. This will then send data to a specific local IP
address then use the router tools that should have come with the product
or download it from the draytek site.

Alternatively, I've heard good things about ethereal, a freebie program.

Geoff Lane

> How does a multi-PC household best track what is eating up their
> monthly download/upload quotas?
>
> My ISP (local, wireless-based) has told me that I am running above my
> quota, but does not offer any way for their users to track their usage
> for themselves. I am reluctant to ditch them (it's not many ISPs where
> the MD rings you back on Christmas Day when you report a problem!)
> but I do need to work out why my usage has soared.
>
> How best I can do this? My router - Draytek 2900VG - supports SNMP,
> although documentation on setting that up seems very thin.
>
> Any suggestions on modestly-priced (or free) software that is
> reasonably quick to set up, and which will ideally let me spot not
> only how much of the throughput is coming from each PC, but which
> websites or other applications are the big users?

Are you running anti virus and anti Trojan software? Have you got a software
firewall? Have you set the router firewall on? Is your wireless network
using encryption? These are likely reasons for the problem you describe.

Peter Crosland

In message <(E-Mail Removed)>, John Geddes
<(E-Mail Removed)> writes
>How does a multi-PC household best track what is eating up their
>monthly download/upload quotas?
>
>My ISP (local, wireless-based) has told me that I am running above my
>quota, but does not offer any way for their users to track their usage
>for themselves. I am reluctant to ditch them (it's not many ISPs where
>the MD rings you back on Christmas Day when you report a problem!) but
>I do need to work out why my usage has soared.
>
>How best I can do this? My router - Draytek 2900VG - supports SNMP,
>although documentation on setting that up seems very thin.
>
>Any suggestions on modestly-priced (or free) software that is
>reasonably quick to set up, and which will ideally let me spot not only
>how much of the throughput is coming from each PC, but which websites
>or other applications are the big users?
>

If you could connect your local PCs via cabling then I'd suggest you
took a look at WatchWAN <http://duf.sourceforge.net/watchwan/>.
Installed on each PC it'll sit in the system tray and create a log of
that machine's bandwidth usage. It takes a tiny bit of setting up but it
is free.

--
dave @ stejonda

John Geddes wrote:
> How does a multi-PC household best track what is eating up their monthly
> download/upload quotas?
>
> My ISP (local, wireless-based) has told me that I am running above my
> quota, but does not offer any way for their users to track their usage
> for themselves. I am reluctant to ditch them (it's not many ISPs where
> the MD rings you back on Christmas Day when you report a problem!) but I
> do need to work out why my usage has soared.

What did they say when you asked them to make this information available
to their users?

Paul Cupis wrote:
> John Geddes wrote:
>> How does a multi-PC household best track what is eating up their
>> monthly download/upload quotas?
>>
>> My ISP (local, wireless-based) has told me that I am running above my
>> quota, but does not offer any way for their users to track their usage
>> for themselves. I am reluctant to ditch them (it's not many ISPs where
>> the MD rings you back on Christmas Day when you report a problem!) but
>> I do need to work out why my usage has soared.
>
> What did they say when you asked them to make this information available
> to their users?
"At present there is no facility to look at your accumulated usage on
the subscriber login, automating provision of this information in a
clear way that will not be misleading is proving problematic.
For the time being we propose only to warn when 80% is used."

Any suggestions on which mainstream ISP I might get them to have a look
at to see what others have managed?

John Geddes

dave @ stejonda wrote:
> In message <(E-Mail Removed)>, John Geddes
> <(E-Mail Removed)> writes
>> How does a multi-PC household best track what is eating up their
>> monthly download/upload quotas?
>>
[snip]

> If you could connect your local PCs via cabling then I'd suggest you
> took a look at WatchWAN <http://duf.sourceforge.net/watchwan/>.
> Installed on each PC it'll sit in the system tray and create a log of
> that machine's bandwidth usage. It takes a tiny bit of setting up but it
> is free.
>

Thanks - Watchwan looks like a very neat total-bandwidth monitor - but
it isn't working for me (the "Network Interface to Monitor" box is
empty) - perhaps because I am not on ADSL (connection to ISP is via Wifi
and so I have a separate router). There is no documentation; I have
written to the author in case he has the time to clarify whether it will
work other than on an ADSL modem-router.

John Geddes

"John Geddes" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> Paul Cupis wrote:

>>
>> What did they say when you asked them to make this information available
>> to their users?
> "At present there is no facility to look at your accumulated usage on the
> subscriber login, automating provision of this information in a clear
> way that will not be misleading is proving problematic.
> For the time being we propose only to warn when 80% is used."
>
> Any suggestions on which mainstream ISP I might get them to have a look at
> to see what others have managed?

Though I have never been a Zen customer (still considering) I rather liked
one of the items mentioned in the detail of their service where they email
the customer telling him when he has reached certain limits. From their
FAQs:

Will Zen contact their customers if they are reaching their usage limit?
Yes, we will contact each customer by email once they start to near their
bandwidth threshold, at 50%, 75% and 90%. It will be the responsibility of
each customer to update their contact and email details with Zen. At 100%
customers will be redirected to a special Zen website notifying them that
they have used all of their allowance. This page will provide the option to
purchase additional GB.
Pity they don't all do that.

John Geddes wrote:
> Paul Cupis wrote:
>> John Geddes wrote:
>>> How does a multi-PC household best track what is eating up their
>>> monthly download/upload quotas?
>>>
>>> My ISP (local, wireless-based) has told me that I am running above my
>>> quota, but does not offer any way for their users to track their
>>> usage for themselves. I am reluctant to ditch them (it's not many
>>> ISPs where the MD rings you back on Christmas Day when you report a
>>> problem!) but I do need to work out why my usage has soared.
>>
>> What did they say when you asked them to make this information
>> available to their users?
>
> "At present there is no facility to look at your accumulated usage on
> the subscriber login, automating provision of this information in a
> clear way that will not be misleading is proving problematic.
> For the time being we propose only to warn when 80% is used."
>
> Any suggestions on which mainstream ISP I might get them to have a look
> at to see what others have managed?

Well my employer does this, but as you cannot access the site without a
username and password, they won't be able to see it.

Having just read anonyms post, I'd say that the information/service is
similar - view usage online, historic data, purchase additional transfer
etc. I know that Enta resellers and freedom2surf also gave the
information in one way or another.

The basic method would be to either get radius accounting data from
their own equipment, or from BT if it is their equipment, and the
process/store/display this data. It seems that they already have the
data, so the question would be why they cannot display this to the user
as opposed to just viewing it themselves. I'd need more detailed
information on their suppliers/equipment/setup to comment more accurately.

On Feb 20, 8:49 am, John Geddes <j...@st4rm4rkassociates.co.uk> wrote:

> "At present there is no facility to look at your accumulated usage on
> the subscriber login, automating provision of this information in a
> clear way that will not be misleading is proving problematic.
> For the time being we propose only to warn when 80% is used."

Interesting. So they're assuming that you won't be able to understand
if they tell you that you've uploaded 'x' and downloaded 'y' amount of
data? Surely the very fact that you're interested in what these
numbers might be indicates that you can comprehend what they are?

Perhaps the issue is that traffic statistics are provided by their
kit in some odd units ["You've downloaded an area of the internet the
size of Ireland this month Mr Smith - I'm afraid we're going to have
to surcharge you"], but it seems unlikely to me.

> Any suggestions on which mainstream ISP I might get them to have a look
> at to see what others have managed?

Presumably as you connect wirelessly, then there aren't *any*
mainstream ISPs out there who are comparable, as wireless last-mile
isn't particularly common. Without knowing what equipment they use to
manage your connection, it's difficult to offer advice, however I
would have though that any of the relevant equipment made in the last
decade supports SNMP, if not Netflow/Sflow/etc. Most RADIUS servers do
accounting too. Easynet, for example, use Nagios to graph their
customers' bandwidth use.

In answer to your original question, I use Cacti to poll a variety of
switches and routers, including Drayteks. Although I didn't set up the
router side of it, I imagine it goes something like this:

- Make sure SNMP is turned on and listening on the standard port
- Make sure it's not firewalled, and enabled from the LAN side
- Make sure the community string is set to a known value

And that's pretty much it - there isn't a lot to setting up SNMP on
devices, most of the work is on the agent.

Installing Cacti under Windows:

http://cacti.net/downloads/docs/html...l_windows.html

Cacti may be a bit heavyweight for what you're trying to do.

alexd