How to Monitor Internet usage of my employees in my office?


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Hi to all,

         I runs a Startup company with 10 employees working with 10 computers. I have been using Airtel Broadband connection. There is no server -client network. Internet cable directly connects to 8-port switch and from there goes to each computer.

for the past one month I have been seeing rapid decrease in data.

 

I would like to know How I can monitor each of my employees computer ?

How can I view each of their systems downloading rates daily?

How can I able to control it?

 

Without any external Device like routers, Is there any Open source or Free Softwares avaliable to monitor each Computer?

 

Please guide me.

 

Thank you,

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So your PCs all have a public IP address?  I find that unlikely, and if the case very unsecure..  What is the IP address of one of your machines?  Does its start with 10.x.x.x or 192.168.x.x or 172.16-31.x.x if so then there is something doing nat either tat the isp level or locally other than a switch.

 

If you want to control and monitor what your network does then you need to put in a device between them and the internet.  Something like a UTM would be best solution, could do ip accounting, web filtering to keep machines off bad sites, av scanning of files uploaded/downloaded, email etc. etc..

 

https://www.barracuda.com/products/firewall

 

http://www.zyxel.com/us/en/products_services/usg60w_60_40w_40.shtml?t=p

 

There are lots of options, but putting software on each machine would NOT be how I would suggest you do it..

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Untangle (https://www.untangle.com) or Sophos UTM Essentials (http://www.sophos.com) are both free products that can run on a decent PC and act as a transparent bridge on your connection.  They could report your employee usage without interfering with your connection.  I myself prefer the Sophos product (we use the full featured UTM at my workplace) but untangle provides a web filter for free in it's package.  Both products have pretty low system requirements (Dual Core, 2Gb, 200Gb, dual NIC) and have pretty quick to learn interfaces. 

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I have played with the sophos one - I agree its pretty simple interface, lots of nice features.  I ran it on vm without much issues..  I was even toying with switching to it from pfsense.  But lot of the bells and whistle it had I have no use for, etc..  But yeah it would also be good option if you have some hardware to run it on.

 

I recommended a appliance because if they are coming hear asking, they prob not the tinkering type to setup something like sophos or untangle or even pfsense, etc.  A commercial product gets them the support they need as well, etc.

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Thanks to Alll whos who suggested with their ideas.  I tried the sites you mentioned it seems to be complex and quite expensive

I would like to Know Is there any software for below purpose

 

To know other computer's Downloaded rate ?

to block list of sites.

 

Is there any free or Opensource softwares available to manage this 2 functionality only?

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I'm no expert, but for filter sites could you try open dns, not sure of price for corporate use, but I use free home use to block sites.. Good stuff.

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That should works until your employee start to bring their own USB wireless modems and start routing their internet usages to their own devices.

While they still use their work times for their own internet time at least you won't pay the bandwidth for it.

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That should works until your employee start to bring their own USB wireless modems and start routing their internet usages to their own devices.

While they still use their work times for their own internet time at least you won't pay the bandwidth for it.

The employees shouldn't have admin rights to the PC so they shouldn't be able to run the software to use the device or set up the connection through Windows.

 

I would recommend a low powered PC and 2 NIC's with Untangled. The free application has web filter, Virus Blocker, Spam Blocker, Phish Blocker and Ad Blocker. It cant do HTTPS unless you pay for the HTTPS Inspector but it is a good start.

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  • 1 month later...

Any other suggestions on basic monitoring/logging?  I have a SMB client as well as home customers that are still looking for this capability at a reasonable cost - basically a way to not really block, but simply review websites accessed by devices.

 

A couple have deployed the 'local' invisible agent route like ActiveTrak or Refog, but those don't help with tablets.

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What about a Cisco Meraki security appliance??

You can monitor web usage and its got layer 3/7 filtering as well. It also integrates well with Meraki systems manager as well for realtime control and management of all systems.

Meraki sec appl. start at 250 for the z1 (I got this for my router) and go from 650-12k for the rackmount type.

Systems mgr is free.

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I used to set up ISA server for that purpose. It could generate web visit reports like you asked. Had 7 years of history for one client before retiring his server.

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  • 1 year later...
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