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Measuring bandwidth usage per computer on network

I have a windows server 2003 machine as my NAT server. It has two NICs in it, one for lan, one for internet. How can I keep track of my network's monthly internet usage? In particular, identify which computers / IPs on the local area network are consuming how much bandwidth?

packetguy

Get PRTG Network Monitor 7 (http://www.paessler.com) They have a 30-day trial version. It can sniff all the traffic passing through your server and generate all the usage stats you could possibly imagine. Paessler has a free version that supports up to ten sensors, but I can't remember if that include the traffic sniffing feature. In any event, it's no very expensive (~$500), and you can likely find all kinds of other uses for it's network monitoring abilities.

I've attached a screen shot showing just one of its many reports. It can track total traffic by IP address, Ethernet switch port, IP protocol, or any of several other criteria. The screen shot is from the older version 6; the current version 7 has even more features.

PRTG-Sample-Screenshot.jpg

Frosty555

ASKER

I am currently using PRTG Traffic Grapher to accomplish some basic monitoring. It does include the packet sniffer which I can connect to the WAN/PPP protocol to monitor internet usage.

But it only sees outside IPs. Meaning it can tell me which websites I download the most from (just like the screenshot you included), but it can't tell me which computers on my LAN are using the most bandwidth.

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packetguy

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Frosty555

ASKER

I'll give it a try, but wouldn't I also see all the regular LAN traffic between any computer and the server as well? E.g. remote desktop sessions, local transfer of files etc?

Frosty555

ASKER

okay, i can setup filters in prtg traffic grapher to filter out traffic between the server and the other hosts, and only listen to traffic that goes from external IPs to internal, or vice versa.