- Joined
- Jul 14, 2004
- Location
- New Jersey
Ed was asking about bandwidth monitoring programs, and I figured I throw out a suggestion. The open-scource Untangle gateway can be used. We installed one of these at work, and while it's primarily intended to be a security appliance, it also keeps track of bandwidth useage. It can be configured to create and email you a detailed report of use too.
Pros
1.It's free, and open-scource.
2.It sits between the modem and the rest of your network, telling you exactly how much is used by everyone on the network. It also breaks down useage by network IP and time, so you can tell who's using what and when.
3.You might end up with a safer network along the way.
Cons
1.You'll need a spare machine with two NICs to install it on. As far as I can tell, the machine can not be used for anything else when setup to run Untangle. It looks like a customized, dedicate Linux install.This isn't something you're going to run in the background on your main rig.
Of course if you already have a security appliance of some sort, it will probably give you bandwidth tracking. For example, Sonicwall TZ firewall devices also track bandwidth use by IP.
There are probably other open scource security appliances out there that will do the same thing. Anyone else have any? Smoothwall gets mentioned a lot, does it do something similar?
Pros
1.It's free, and open-scource.
2.It sits between the modem and the rest of your network, telling you exactly how much is used by everyone on the network. It also breaks down useage by network IP and time, so you can tell who's using what and when.
3.You might end up with a safer network along the way.
Cons
1.You'll need a spare machine with two NICs to install it on. As far as I can tell, the machine can not be used for anything else when setup to run Untangle. It looks like a customized, dedicate Linux install.This isn't something you're going to run in the background on your main rig.
Of course if you already have a security appliance of some sort, it will probably give you bandwidth tracking. For example, Sonicwall TZ firewall devices also track bandwidth use by IP.
There are probably other open scource security appliances out there that will do the same thing. Anyone else have any? Smoothwall gets mentioned a lot, does it do something similar?