Networking Bandwidth Issue

[EnK]

Hello Everyone!

I have a network at home with 4 pcs connected to it. mine, my wifes, and my 2 sons.

and we always seem to lag like crazy! when the kids are home from school. and when there at school, we are lag free.

so i know one of them are downloading! kids with there movies and songs etc.

i have asked them both to stop. yet they are both saying they aint..

my question to you is, is there any program (freeware preferably) if not i could always download it and crack it..

that this program will tell me, How many kb,megs,gbs etc each of them has used? and how much bandwidth they are consuming?

I would absolutely love a program like this, this way i can also limit to what they use. and there wont be any more lies. haha

I thank you for your time in reading my problem; I look forward from hearing from you.

 

[tha_vice]

well 1st, before you turn your wirless network into the gulag, you may want to go here

speedtest.net and link your results in a reply.

next you'll probably want to check and see if the machines are the victims of malware, and not due to any sort of irresponsible browsing, but more to the fact that the internet is not a safe place w/o a solid antivirus/ internet security suite in place on the machine end.

 

[EnK]

i know its now there pcs, as i run fortnightly maintenance on them.

as for the speedtest: http://www.speedtest.net/result/1930944838.png

and i am certain it is from them downloading, as they are Anime Addicts, constantly downloading anime.

Also music.

plus they are prone to leaving there pcs on, whilst at school. and this results in no lag, from malware etc. they dont leave them on to download, as i am always going in there checking there pcs out, and turning them off.

so this furthers my suspicion they are downloading once they come home.

i have also used Resource monitor, to check the bandwidth being used by all the programs they use. and all programs are using very little.

 

[sk1939]

I'm sure you are lagging in download because of the anime downloads. Most anime distributors use(d?) Bittorrent for distribution, which can use quite a bit of bandwidth.

 

[EnK]

yeah i know they are downloading, as stated in my original post, i want to know of a program, that monitors all pcs on network, and how much bandwidth each pc is using. so i can narrow it down to one of the boys, as they are both lying lol.

i tried netcut, but it doesn't tell me which PC is using the most bandwidth, it works in regards to cutting them off, but doesn't tell me which one is using the bandwidth

 

[jam74]

Good Morning. I ran across a piece of free software that may help you. I have not used it, but have heard good reports.
It is NetWorx – Free Bandwidth Monitoring and Usage Reporting software.

 

[Hawkeye22]

It's reltively costly, but this looks like it does what you need.

http://www.softactivity.com/employee-monitoring.asp

 

[sk1939]

yeah i know they are downloading, as stated in my original post, i want to know of a program, that monitors all pcs on network, and how much bandwidth each pc is using. so i can narrow it down to one of the boys, as they are both lying lol.

i tried netcut, but it doesn't tell me which PC is using the most bandwidth, it works in regards to cutting them off, but doesn't tell me which one is using the bandwidth

I don't know of one that's free, but an easy way to tell is to force disconnect one of their computers and see if the speeds improve, if so then you know the culprit. If not, then it's obviously the other computer, or both of them.

 

[reitzell]

Yep, you can.

The absolute way to do this is to:
Load dd-wrt (you can google that) software into a dd-wrt capable router. You can then set that up to send syslog data to a syslog server. (In other words… you replace the OS of my router with a linux based router OS that logs traffic data to a syslog server. This will be very detailed data and a ton of it.)

If you think it is just malware on the PCs:
Load Wireshark on the suspect PC and “sniff”/look at what it is transmitting/receiving when the PC isn’t doing anything.

Good luck,

 

[EnK]

Best answer selected by EnK.