Bandwidth Monitor

[cpjitservices]

At home I have a 30GB limit on my broadband - me and the wife average 10GB usually, but now we have a lodger and they want connecting to the net in our house which is fine - however I am looking for a program that will tell them how much they've used. I have found one called bandwidth monitor and it does the job but once the limit is reached it plays a sound and then thats it - but what I want is the internet to be blocked completely if they go over the limit.

 

Unfortunately on my home router there isnt this kind of thing in it and was wondering if there is a little app out there that can do it - I'd set something like 10GB a month and set the months up according to when the online bandwidth monitor is started - this way they will have 10gb and if they go over it will tell them and stop their connection.

 

Cheers.

[m25man]

The PRTG router monitor is what you need however you will have to collect the stats from the router using snmp which means a 24/7 syslog running.

Unless you already have a server/pc running 24/7 for other reasons the cost of actually monitoring a single user in this manner could prove to be an uneconomic exercise.

 

My HP Media Centre PC costs about .20p per dayto run 24/7 (£73 per year) and like a twit I was using it to run my Owl Electricity usage monitoring software!

Ended up costing more to monitor my usage than what I could save by monitoring...

[cpjitservices]

My PC & network is all on all the time 24/7 as I get some really good discounts on my energy so having stuff running doesn't bother me, just looked at PRTG and have installed it but can't get it too block the net once the bandwidth limit which I set is reached.

[Guest Guest]

Unless you do it at the router there is no way on stopping it; whats stopping them using their phone even if you do block their laptop...?

 

Have a look at this to see if your router is supported www.dd-wrt.com | Unleash Your Router

 

just looked at PRTG and have installed it but can't get it too block the net once the bandwidth limit which I set is reached.

 

It can't, it's the router which needs to do the blocking and unless it has that feature it can't be done.

[cpjitservices]

looked at dd-wrt and my router doesn't exist my router is a thomson TG585 v8,there is no settings in the router for any SNMP. I was wondering I have a VM with Squid/Dansguardian on it would i be able to set something up in that and then set the proxy address on the lodgers machine to go through the proxy ? I have set filtering up with DG before but not throttling

[Steve21]

Depending on if you want to pay (or I assume not),

 

NetLimiter is awesome program but costs. Some free alterns I've played with include BitMeter (Most of the features in NL, but prefer NL)

 

These both run client side though, did you want it from your end/router?

 

Steve

[cpjitservices]

client side would be fine - but stats would be good to see at my end. I'm gonna give DG a go with its throttling because IIRC it has this option.

[RabbieBurns]

Is the lodger paying rent? why not move to a proper broadband provider that gives more than a measly 30gb?

 

You can get unlimited adsl2+ packages for about 30 quid a month, and 20 quid will get you much more than 30

Edited April 29, 2011 by RabbieBurns

[cpjitservices]

lol nope cant move provider we only have one provider where I live, they have the monopoly of the city and wont let anyone else come in, im already paying 39.99 a month for ADSL2+ 24mbps but with 30 gb a month cap

[m25man]

I should have read your OP properly...

 

PRTG will of course only monitor/report on the router usage and as stated elsewhere you can only control the gateway at the gateway so if your router isn't up to the job then you will have to change the router/gateway used by your lodger.

 

Treat them like a public guest user and provide them with a controlled gateway, a home brew hotspot so to speak.

 

There are the open wrt hotspot firmware options for many of the cheap cable routers out there, so create them their own LAN/wifi segment and you will be able to control what goes in/out of it, separately from your own traffic.

Chillifire have a free community version as just one example.

 

Other options, apart from a routed subnet in which you control the gateway as described above you could use are arp cache controls or internal proxies all of which are valid methods but all a lot of work and a bit OTT for a lodger..

 

I would get a cheap cable wifi router and set the Wan port to be on my own LAN and lock it down so I have full management from the WAN port.

Set the cable router up to use your ADSL router as it's gateway.

 

You can monitor the usage of your guests router and control it using whatever methods are available in your own LAN zone effectively you are your own ISP subletting your connection.

[Guest Guest]

iirc endian firewall does everything you need

 

Endian - *Unified Threat Management, Firewall Appliance, UTM Appliance, Hotspot, Antispam, Antivirus, VPN, OpenVPN, Open Source*