network/internet bandwidth usage reporting app?

[bobogs]

I'm looking for an app that can report on our network and/or internet line bandwidth usage, at the client pc level. I'd like to see if I can figure out who (if anyone) is killing our internet bandwidth during the day. It could be someone playing internet radio or watching movies...no idea, but there are times when our internet connection is much slower than it should be.

Results from a dslreports.com speedtest:
dslreports.com speed test result on 2006-09-01 12:57:00 EST:
269 / 253
Your download speed : 269 kbps or 33.7 KB/sec.

Your upload speed : 253 kbps or 31.6 KB/sec.

We don't have a very big pipe, but this is absolutely horrible.

Thanks!
Gary

[Abbadon]

I am not an evangelist of linux, but iptables contains these features are even more.

check this utility for configuring the linux firewall iptables:

http://www.simonzone.com/software/guarddog/#introduction

[CrayonEater]

The easiest thing to do is (assuming Windows XP) is for each PC to just go into DOS and run netstat -s | more. Assuming your

Your router or firewall may give some insights as well but you don't say what, if any, you have. Try poking around the administration pages for a traffic log, or even just the logs in general. If you have a managed switch, that may also tell you what's going on.

While there are dedicated apps to traffic analysis, none really do much that Ethereal/Wireshark or Snort cannot, aside from making pretty graphs. So, if the above doesn't work, let me know if you need help with setting up a Wireshark box.

[Abbadon]

My original post was intended to place a box between the internet and the computers in your network, this way, all traffic would be routed through this linux firewall configured to monitor each connection, logs would be stored for you to review later on.

You would need to configure the iptables advanced features using the tool I mentioned above.

[ViRaL1]

It might not hurt to run those tests during off hours so we can see what things SHOULD be under virtually no load.

[bobogs]

Thanks for all the suggestions. The Linux solution sounds a bit over my head, and I don't want to go changing our firewall's configuration without the help of our network techs. I'll ask the network guys again to see if they know of any tools to get some definitive answers. This is really their domain anyway, so I should just plant the seed and let them do the task.

Thanks again.