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#1 2009-07-06 17:38:23

arew264
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From: Friendswood, Texas, US
Registered: 2006-07-01
Posts: 394
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Bandwidth Meter

I have Comcast internet, which put a 250 GB cap on bandwidth usage last October. I'm looking for a way to monitor my bandwidth usage to see how far under this cap I am right now (I haven't exceeded it yet). I am aware that I'll need to have a linux box between my network and the internet, and I'm wondering how people are doing this right now. I'd love to just replace my router with a linux box, but that would mean that only I could effectively administrate it, and this is my family's internet connection.
Any suggestions?

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#2 2009-07-06 18:55:31

cactus
Taco Eater
From: t͈̫̹ͨa͖͕͎̱͈ͨ͆ć̥̖̝o̫̫̼s͈̭̱̞͍̃!̰
Registered: 2004-05-25
Posts: 4,622
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Re: Bandwidth Meter

can you put an alternate firmware on your router?

then you could use something like this I suppose..
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/BWlog
http://www.hetos.de/bwlog.html


"Be conservative in what you send; be liberal in what you accept." -- Postel's Law
"tacos" -- Cactus' Law
"t̥͍͎̪̪͗a̴̻̩͈͚ͨc̠o̩̙͈ͫͅs͙͎̙͊ ͔͇̫̜t͎̳̀a̜̞̗ͩc̗͍͚o̲̯̿s̖̣̤̙͌ ̖̜̈ț̰̫͓ạ̪͖̳c̲͎͕̰̯̃̈o͉ͅs̪ͪ ̜̻̖̜͕" -- -̖͚̫̙̓-̺̠͇ͤ̃ ̜̪̜ͯZ͔̗̭̞ͪA̝͈̙͖̩L͉̠̺͓G̙̞̦͖O̳̗͍

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#3 2009-07-06 18:57:34

arew264
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From: Friendswood, Texas, US
Registered: 2006-07-01
Posts: 394
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Re: Bandwidth Meter

No, I have a wired router (Linksys BEFSX41), and while I can run Linux on it, no full firmwares have been developed because the router isn't too popular and the kernel driver for the 4 port switch is unstable.
I'm going to have a low power always-on server in a week or so, and I can do pretty much whatever I want with that.

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#4 2009-07-06 23:01:03

R00KIE
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From: Between a computer and a chair
Registered: 2008-09-14
Posts: 4,734

Re: Bandwidth Meter

Is there any customer area from your ISP that you can visit to check how much you have downloaded?
I guess they should provide something so you can check how much you have downloaded since they impose limits.


R00KIE
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#5 2009-07-06 23:11:52

arew264
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From: Friendswood, Texas, US
Registered: 2006-07-01
Posts: 394
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Re: Bandwidth Meter

R00KIE wrote:

Is there any customer area from your ISP that you can visit to check how much you have downloaded?
I guess they should provide something so you can check how much you have downloaded since they impose limits.

Ah, yes, apparantly you haven't dealt with Comcast in the past.
Yes, they should provide something, and yes, they're working on it. The release date was set for January 5 of this year (as I said, they started recording bandwidth usage last October). The release date was missed with no notice from Comcast, and recently they've unofficially stated that it might be in the third quarter of this year. This seems really stupid to me because all they really need is a cron job and a script to process the statistics that they're already recording, but whatever. They've posted screenshots of how it works, but they keep insisting that it isn't finished.

Comcast has a track record of doing nasty things in the back room like suspending customers for excessive bandwidth usage before there was any official policy, silently resetting bittorrent connections that go outside the comcast network, and choking bandwidth outside of company policy. They switched to this cap while under investigation by the FCC.

Last edited by arew264 (2009-07-06 23:13:14)

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#6 2009-07-07 00:58:39

sand_man
Member
From: Australia
Registered: 2008-06-10
Posts: 2,164

Re: Bandwidth Meter

Kind of off topic but, 250GB is huge! You Americans don't know how good you have it!


neutral

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#7 2009-07-07 03:29:50

fukawi2
Ex-Administratorino
From: .vic.au
Registered: 2007-09-28
Posts: 6,217
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Re: Bandwidth Meter

sand_man wrote:

Kind of off topic but, 250GB is huge! You Americans don't know how good you have it!

+1 I have a TEN gb limit mad

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#8 2009-07-07 04:20:29

sand_man
Member
From: Australia
Registered: 2008-06-10
Posts: 2,164

Re: Bandwidth Meter

fukawi2 wrote:
sand_man wrote:

Kind of off topic but, 250GB is huge! You Americans don't know how good you have it!

+1 I have a TEN gb limit mad

haha me too! 10GB peak , 10GB off peak and 10GB upload


neutral

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#9 2009-07-07 04:42:27

rebugger
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2007-10-28
Posts: 229

Re: Bandwidth Meter

Germany: no limit, but they are starting censoring now...

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#10 2009-07-07 05:02:10

Allan
Pacman
From: Brisbane, AU
Registered: 2007-06-09
Posts: 11,365
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Re: Bandwidth Meter

sand_man wrote:
fukawi2 wrote:
sand_man wrote:

Kind of off topic but, 250GB is huge! You Americans don't know how good you have it!

+1 I have a TEN gb limit mad

haha me too! 10GB peak , 10GB off peak and 10GB upload

15GB total here...

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#11 2009-07-08 00:44:05

fukawi2
Ex-Administratorino
From: .vic.au
Registered: 2007-09-28
Posts: 6,217
Website

Re: Bandwidth Meter

sand_man wrote:

haha me too! 10GB peak , 10GB off peak and 10GB upload

10gb total for me sad
Lucky my ISP mirror's Arch and provides unmetered access to that big_smile

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#12 2009-07-08 03:02:41

sand_man
Member
From: Australia
Registered: 2008-06-10
Posts: 2,164

Re: Bandwidth Meter

My ISP mirrors Arch too which is also unmetered but I can't use it because they don't sync it often enough...useless *$@#

I'll stop being off topic now tongue


neutral

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#13 2009-07-08 10:42:44

R00KIE
Forum Fellow
From: Between a computer and a chair
Registered: 2008-09-14
Posts: 4,734

Re: Bandwidth Meter

Well yes I've never dealt with Comcast, I live across the Atlantic.

I used to have a limit of 10G "international" downloads and that limit was lifted a few months ago (here there were two kinds of traffic, national which was unlimited and international 10G limit), 10G wasn't that much but now that I have no limits typically I use around 50G per month.

I have joined the adsl bandwagon quite late so how don't know how it was in the beginning but I've always had a way to check how much I have downloaded. It's not fair to have limits and not having a way to check how much you have downloaded. Everyone here used to complain about the bloody traffic distinction because the isp changed the classification from time to time without warning but I guess that we didn't have it that bad after all.

Mind you that depending on the isp and the times of the day/week we can have traffic shaping and with the new bloody eu laws I bet we will start to be censored pretty soon.


R00KIE
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#14 2009-07-12 06:22:14

Dregath
Member
From: Australia
Registered: 2009-07-07
Posts: 19
Website

Re: Bandwidth Meter

Someone that uses my ISP has made a little app that does what you want and works under Wine quite well, you could ask him if you could get the source code and edit it to work with your ISP and even port it to linux if your so inclined smile
It's also quite good because it reads off your ISP's site so if they read it inaccurately (As Telstra/Bigpond in Australia has been accused of) your going to get what they think you've downloaded and if you have multiple computers on the network its monitoring all of them.
You can get the app at: http://www.users.on.net/~johnson/internode/

Offtopic: I can't wait for Kevin Rudd's new "Super fast broadband network" to start going ahead in Australia! Didn't they promise 1GBS speeds? That's gota make ISP's give us bigger caps, when you can download your whole months usage in under a hour!

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#15 2009-07-12 16:12:50

arew264
Member
From: Friendswood, Texas, US
Registered: 2006-07-01
Posts: 394
Website

Re: Bandwidth Meter

That would be great, but as I said earlier, Comcast isn't making their recorded usage numbers available to customers (yet). I guess my best bet is probably to look around at what the firewall linux distributions are using.

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#16 2009-07-12 18:03:18

daf666
Member
Registered: 2007-04-08
Posts: 470
Website

Re: Bandwidth Meter

@arew264: I would use ntop if I were you

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