New to Backtrack. Network traffic monitoring question.

[neiltholland]

Hi; Backtrack was suggested to me on another forum, in reply to a query on how I might be able to determine traffic volume by MAC or IP on a little wireless network. My daughter shares a connection with roommates and between the 3 of them are always max'ing out the monthly d/l cap. Of course they all stream and d/l and no one wants to alter their behavior, so it's become quite contentious. So my question is there a tool or method included in Backtrack that would allow us to track volume by MAC or IP? TIA Neil.

[lupin]

If it is your daughter with this problem, and presumably she has moved out of home (since she has roommates) why are you looking into this? Its always harder to do these things when the person investigating is one step removed from the problem.

Anyway, I don't know if BackTrack should necessarily be your go-to solution for this type of problem - its a Penetration Testing distribution, not a Network Monitoring distribution - and that means that the people here are more skilled in Penetration testing activities rather than Networking usage monitoring. As for suggestions, about all I can do at the moment is throw a bunch of names of open source network monitoring/statistics gathering tools at you for you to investigate - Nagios, sancp, ntop, Argus, Etherape.

Another suggestion is to get each user of this shared connection to install and use their own monitoring software on their own PC. If they all share the connection surely they all have a vested interest in finding out how much capacity each of them uses? Free tools are available to do this - just hunt around.

[kevin55]

Spiceworks is a great network monitoring tool but its probably a little too much for a home network, its more for small-medium sized businesses. Some people use it in their home though, you could take a look at it if you are the owner of the apartment and are renting.