Anyone in need to monitor internet traffic volume?

[carlton68]

Hi,

 

I am thinking about changing my broadband connection from a flatrate to a volume based flatrate (no idea how that's named in english). My problem is that I use a broadband router and need to monitor the traffic from the internet, but not the traffic between the clients. About two weeks ago I found a nice tool that does the trick. I am sure there are more around. If you know any please tell.

 

Now what I found is a nice freeware PRTG Traffic Grapher .

It's a freeware for private use and then only able to monitor one device (well, I want to monitor only one).

My setup is braodband modem - broadband router - up to 4 computers. Internet is only connected when the main machine is on and traffic should be monitored from the main machine.

I found PRTG in an online computer magazine and decided to give it a try. Installation and setup was easy apart from one thing, and that was that I had to enable automatic startup of the PRTG service. This is mentioned somewhere, but I can't find anymore. Had to go to computer management - services - double click on PRTG 4 service and choose startup type automatic. It IS written somewhere otherwise I wouldn't know.

Then PRTG service starts with windows and collects the traffic info in the background. To get info about the traffic start PRTG main program. Reports and panels can be customized.

Works fine and reports the traffic via my router. No matter if I access the internet with one computer or more. Traffic between computers is not added. So if I change to a volume based plan I will be able to know how much is still left for the month.

There is a limitation of course. The monitoring service runs on one of the clients. If this client is down and another client accesses the net at that time then this traffic is not added into the reports. Doesn't apply to me but might be interesting for others.

Setting up PRTG for the simple setup broadband modem - single computer (or several computers with internet connection sharing on one machine) is possible. It's more difficult but very well coverd in the help topics of PRTG. Out of curiosity I tried it myself and it took about 10 minutes including restart. But I knew the program a bit by then, of course.

 

I thought I shoud share the info. Maybe someone can point to another tool that is even better (and freeware, please). I'll be happy to give it a try. If you were looking for such a program then this might be what you were looking for.

Thanks for reading.