KatGamer Posted December 1, 2014 Share Posted December 1, 2014 I have a Motorola Surfboard SB6141 cable modem and an ASUS RT-AC56U router. I'd like to monitor my internet usage. While my ISP, Mediacom (the only choice in my area besides measly 3.3mbps DSL), does offer a usage check (this month I used 267GB of my 350GB cap), I'd like to see where my data is going. How much am I using on my Roku vs my PS4, for example. Let me start by saying that I'd really rather not flash my router to dd-wrt if there is a simpler solution out there. While I've "hacked" (I.e. Jailbroken) devices before, dd-wrt seems really complicated and I would rather not take the risk if I don't absolutely have to. I had Googled a month or two ago and found some kind of Windows software that was supposed to monitor usage, but it only tracked that PC, not all my connections. My household has two Windows PCs, a Windows laptop, a Chromebook, a Roku, a PS4, a Nintendo 3DS, an iPad and an iPhone among its Wifi devices (and I'm probably missing something.) So is there an easy way to track my usage and how much data goes where? Additionally, looking at my router's client map is a little confusing. Some devices are easily identified, but others seem to be random names. Clicking on them will reveal the manufacturer, so I can figure out which one is the Roku, for example, but for others that doesn't help. And not all my devices are listed. Attached is a pic of what I mean. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Original Poster Posted December 1, 2014 Share Posted December 1, 2014 I have a Motorola Surfboard SB6141 cable modem and an ASUS RT-AC56U router. I'd like to monitor my internet usage. While my ISP, Mediacom (the only choice in my area besides measly 3.3mbps DSL), does offer a usage check (this month I used 267GB of my 350GB cap), I'd like to see where my data is going. How much am I using on my Roku vs my PS4, for example. Let me start by saying that I'd really rather not flash my router to dd-wrt if there is a simpler solution out there. While I've "hacked" (I.e. Jailbroken) devices before, dd-wrt seems really complicated and I would rather not take the risk if I don't absolutely have to. I had Googled a month or two ago and found some kind of Windows software that was supposed to monitor usage, but it only tracked that PC, not all my connections. My household has two Windows PCs, a Windows laptop, a Chromebook, a Roku, a PS4, a Nintendo 3DS, an iPad and an iPhone among its Wifi devices (and I'm probably missing something.) So is there an easy way to track my usage and how much data goes where? Additionally, looking at my router's client map is a little confusing. Some devices are easily identified, but others seem to be random names. Clicking on them will reveal the manufacturer, so I can figure out which one is the Roku, for example, but for others that doesn't help. And not all my devices are listed. Attached is a pic of what I mean. Cant really give a suggestion there are alot of monitoring software available, although on a side note, they are not random names they are MAC addresses...first 3 hex pairs are assigned to a company that made/designed them and the second set of 3 are assigned to the device its self.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roger H. Veteran Posted December 1, 2014 Veteran Share Posted December 1, 2014 With the Asus you can probably use Merlin Firmware to get better details. I think that's one of the features that he added. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
remixedcat Posted December 1, 2014 Share Posted December 1, 2014 The only thing that would help your situation is alternate firmware or running everything through a server that has monitoring software on it. * The first option is much easier and lower energy usage. Flashing router firmware isn't too hard and it's the same amount of steps as jailbreaking/rooting an iphone/android. Just be sure to follow the uctions to the letter.... Merlin firmware is great that I heard and there's support threads on smallnetbuilder and people help you quick there. <<<is the link * NOTE: the server approach may work in different ways depending on the software used. Most of the server level monitoring software requires either probes that are installed on each node or it will use something called SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) Many devices have at least SNMP, however stuff like Roku and Consoles don't. The software I use for my monitoring is PRTG and you get 30 sensors with it. (I have 50) I monitor desktops/laptops with it with probes and I use SNMP for the access points. However my router (Cisco Meraki Z1) has advanced monitoring built in and B/W graphs down to the application level! Some monitor on a network level rather than application, however those are pricey like Fluke Networks (can get up to 50,000USD!!) I can see if I can find one of those for cheap but they might not work as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+BudMan MVC Posted December 1, 2014 MVC Share Posted December 1, 2014 Do you have any hardware to play with that you could put in front of your router? Old PC with 2 interfaces? Do you have a smart switch that supports spanned ports or flows? And an old PC, other than flashing your router with 3rd party firmware what will allow such monitoring your going to need some way of sending the network info to software, be it flows from as switch or span port that you could connect to something that can monitor the traffic, etc. Are you we talking wireless devices as well or just stuff wired to your router and or switches? There are lots of tools out there to do this, but you need to be able to see the traffic, or have a device to send the flows to the software, etc. What hardware, switches/old pcs do you have to play with - or is there a budget for this project? If you can get a span port going on a switch. You could use something as cheap as raspberry pi to do the monitoring or your main pc if you wanted.. Would suggest a 2nd nic if wanted to use your PC to monitor, etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KatGamer Posted December 1, 2014 Author Share Posted December 1, 2014 Only one PC has a wired connection, everything else connects wirelessly including one of the PCs. Thanks, I'll take a look at Merlin's firmware. The thing that worried me about dd-wrt is the different builds, then they suggest you use ASUS' backup tools to flash it, etc. Also I've never jail broken a smart phone, my jail breaking was all on feature phones before smart phones ever came out. I'd take, say a Sony Ericsson phone that came with Cingular's bloat ware on it and install the default Sony version of the OS instead. BudMan, I do have an old Netbook that's not in use, and I've dual-booted with Ubuntu and JoliOS before just as experiments. Original Poster (nice confusing name!) I do recognize that some of those are MAC addresses but I didn't know you could decipher manufacturers from them. The one that really confusd me was the one that starts with NP-12Cetc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+BudMan MVC Posted December 1, 2014 MVC Share Posted December 1, 2014 The first thee numbers of a mac are registered to companies.. So you can look up the maker of the interface.. See your last one on the list 38:B1:DB Hon Hai Precision Ind. Co.,Ltd. Some of them are resolved, so that is why you see something like NP-, that 40F407 is Nintendo. Well your going to have a problem with most of your clients being wifi, if your not viewing the traffic at the router then. Because if you put a switch between your modem and your router all your going to see is the same IP, and only the macs of your routers wan port. You could see all the traffic and log how much is going to say neowin on 80, and how much is going to cnn.com, and you could break down all the traffic by sessions and ports. But there would be no wait to determine what is from what client without knowing where the clients were going.. Real PITA. If you put the switch with span ports and your laptop connected before the router you would only see traffic from wired devices. So there would be no way to log the traffic from your wireless clients. Unless you got another router to use as AP or real AP and did something like this So now you would disable wifi on your router. And all your wifi would use your new AP all connected to the switch with span port feature, you span the port that goes to your real router to the port that goes to your laptop. Then you run some software on your laptop to remote on this. Say something like http://www.ntop.org/products/ntop/ Or something easier might be http://bandwidthd.sourceforge.net/ Now since the laptop would be seeing all traffic to and from the internet, bandwidthd would report on all the IPs total traffic, etc. This would prob be a great setup for you.. But with the way your network is currently laid out you don't have anywhere to tap in and see all the traffic so you could monitor it. I am fairly sure the merlin firmware supports softflowd, so you could send flows to a ###### lot of different software running on either your PC or your laptop to report on your traffic based on ip. I would think bandwidthd would be your best option to be honest.. Other than what might be built into whatever 3rd party firmware you pick. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KatGamer Posted December 10, 2014 Author Share Posted December 10, 2014 I did get Merlin up and running and turned on the monitor by IP, but it's not showing me usage by IP and I haven't had time to sit down and troubleshoot it. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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