Excessive system usage problem -

[Ed Greshko]

On 06/24/2011 07:38 PM, Bob Goodwin wrote:
>         I have a home LAN and limited internet access. If I exceed the
>         usage specified in my subscription my data rates are slowed.
>
>         There are a dozen devices that can connect to the internet and
>         five or six people using them. yesterday someone left something
>         running and by the time I realized the problem we had used more
>         than a gigabyte which doesn't sound like much if you have
>         unlimited usage but we only get 17 gigs per month.
>
>         I shut down the other computers but never identified which one
>         had been causing the problem.
>
>         Can someone suggest a way of measuring usage per device,
>         identifying them by address, MAC, or uuid? I really need to know
>         which one is the offender to control the problem.
>

It is quite impossible to properly think about answering your question
without knowing the topology of your LAN.  Basically, is not possible to
measure traffic from individual systems unless all traffic passes
through a "choke point".

Even if, for example, all of your systems connect via Ethernet cables to
a router, which then connects to the your ISP, the monitoring would most
probably need to be done on the router itself since most of these
devices employ switch technology.