On Sun, Mar 28, 2021 at 10:53:49AM -0600, Frank Cox wrote:> Is there a program that will tell me what's eating the bandwidth on a lan? > I'm thinking of something that would tell me that a.b.c.d is using so many mbps and a.b.c.e is using this many and so on.Is this a home network or a business one? If a home setup (or small business with consumer-style networking), https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/services/network_monitoring/bwmon> Or can just-another-computer-on-the-network actually see that sort of > information? I don't know enough about the low level nuts and bolts of > networking to know if it has that kind of access. I'm really just > interested in volume of traffic per attached device rather than specific > origin/destination information if that's easier to obtain.You're right that you generally can't see everything from just any computer on a network, at least if it's switched. You need to watch from your gateway. -- Matthew Miller <mattdm at fedoraproject.org> Fedora Project Leader
On Sun, 28 Mar 2021 13:14:16 -0400 Matthew Miller wrote:> Is this a home network or a business one?It's a really basic setup "routers from Staples" (dlink and tplink brands I think) plugged into the ISP's modems.> You're right that you generally can't see everything from just any computer > on a network, at least if it's switched. You need to watch from your > gateway.Then I'm outta luck for doing this sort of thing since the gateways are the tplink and dlink routers. I thought that might be the case. Thanks for the answers, guys! It isn't what I wanted to hear, but now I know more about this than I did before. -- MELVILLE THEATRE ~ Real D 3D Digital Cinema ~ www.melvilletheatre.com
On 3/28/21 7:36 PM, Frank Cox wrote:> On Sun, 28 Mar 2021 13:14:16 -0400 > Matthew Miller wrote: > >> Is this a home network or a business one? > > It's a really basic setup "routers from Staples" (dlink and tplink brands I think) plugged into the ISP's modems. > >> You're right that you generally can't see everything from just any computer >> on a network, at least if it's switched. You need to watch from your >> gateway. > > Then I'm outta luck for doing this sort of thing since the gateways are the tplink and dlink routers. I thought that might be the case. > > Thanks for the answers, guys! It isn't what I wanted to hear, but now I know more about this than I did before. >If you want to keep your tplink and dlink devices, you might be able to get a managed switch for a few bucks via craigslist or ebay and plug the devices on the network into that. For the purpose, an (old) 10/100Mbit should do, though it's certainly better to get a 1GB (or faster) one if you can find one for a good price. Just keep in mind that you may need to configure the switch before you can use it, which can involve using a serial cable with some models. You'd probably want one you don't need that cable for. Such a switch will usually show you how much bandwidth is going over each port and makes this an easy task.