Logging system usage -

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Wed, Mar 30, 2011 at 12:31:31 -0400,
  Bob Goodwin <bobgoodwin at wildblue.net> wrote:
> 
>         DD-WRT in the router logs some usage but not enough to be of
>         much use and their mailing list/forum is nearly useless for
>         problem solving.

Openwrt may be a better option. There is a package management system and it
is relatively easy to do custom builds if you want something outside of
the available packages or built differently.

>         So I am looking for a scheme for tracking usage by mac or device
>         address. I check usage daily but when I see a jump upward I need
>         to know what caused it, I always begin to think through what I
>         have done before panicking the whole family.  Any suggestion
>         appreciated.

If you run the router as an actual router rather than a bridge you should
be able to get a pretty good handle on this using traffic shapping. The
Linux Advanced Routing and Traffic Control documentation is a bit dated,
but should give you some ideas of what is possible and how to implement
policy. The doucmentation is at lartc.org.