LANetwork Traffic

Is there a free app that will tell me what is going on on my home LAN ?
Not what my PC is doing, but all of what is happening on my LAN.

I have an AT&T WiFi router.
Is there some way to get that info from the router using a PC cabled to
the router ?
Some stand alone app that will do this ?

My LAN speed seems to go from fast to slow but I do not know why.

I have 5 PCs and 2 NAS on my LAN by cable or WiFi.

On Wed, 24 Oct 2018 11:19:00 -0700, Manny wrote:


Is there a free app that will tell me what is going on on my home LAN ?
Not what my PC is doing, but all of what is happening on my LAN.

There are multiple ways to get information about the traffic on your
LAN. Here are my top picks.

This one is quite detailed.
https://wiki.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Network_traffic_analysis_with_netflow_and_ntop

PRTG is very popular and has a free version available.
https://www.paessler.com/network_monitoring_tool

Decide what you want to see, then decide which tool(s) most easily allow
you to do that.

--

Char Jackson

On 24/10/2018 23:12, Char Jackson wrote:
On Wed, 24 Oct 2018 11:19:00 -0700, Manny wrote:


Is there a free app that will tell me what is going on on my home LAN ?
Not what my PC is doing, but all of what is happening on my LAN.

There are multiple ways to get information about the traffic on your
LAN. Here are my top picks.

This one is quite detailed.
https://wiki.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Network_traffic_analysis_with_netflow_and_ntop

PRTG is very popular and has a free version available.
https://www.paessler.com/network_monitoring_tool

Decide what you want to see, then decide which tool(s) most easily allow
you to do that.



You could also use Wireshark.

https://www.wireshark.org/

Fokke

Fokke Nauta wrote:
On 24/10/2018 23:12, Char Jackson wrote:
On Wed, 24 Oct 2018 11:19:00 -0700, Manny wrote:


Is there a free app that will tell me what is going on on my home LAN ?
Not what my PC is doing, but all of what is happening on my LAN.

There are multiple ways to get information about the traffic on your
LAN. Here are my top picks.

This one is quite detailed.
https://wiki.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Network_traffic_analysis_with_netflow_and_ntop


PRTG is very popular and has a free version available.
https://www.paessler.com/network_monitoring_tool

Decide what you want to see, then decide which tool(s) most easily allow
you to do that.



You could also use Wireshark.

https://www.wireshark.org/

Fokke

The OP wants to know about traffic on remote machines,
viewed centrally from a single machine. It can still be
a fun project. I don't know if I could arrange to monitor
a large number of machines this way or not.

https://serverfault.com/questions/36...with-wireshark

ssh root@sniff_server_ip -p port tcpdump -U -s0 'not port 22' -i eth0 -w - | wireshark -k -i -

You can also build a router, with a regular PC. I found
a quad port LAN card for under $100 on Newegg, which is
an amazing price. But you do need some PCIe slots wider
than x1 lane to make it work, and not all PCs will be a
good platform for the exercise. My current PC, I could make
a seven port router out of it, but I'd have to use my
cheesy PCI video card to complete the project.

Once you've built a central machine like that, fitted
your monitor, then you can look at any traffic your
heart desires. However, it won't tell you what's wrong
with the ATT box. It just adds new hardware to the picture :-)
That's probably not what the OP wants to hear.

Paul

On Fri, 26 Oct 2018 08:47:04 +0200, Fokke Nauta
wrote:

On 24/10/2018 23:12, Char Jackson wrote:
On Wed, 24 Oct 2018 11:19:00 -0700, Manny wrote:


Is there a free app that will tell me what is going on on my home LAN ?
Not what my PC is doing, but all of what is happening on my LAN.

There are multiple ways to get information about the traffic on your
LAN. Here are my top picks.

This one is quite detailed.
https://wiki.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Network_traffic_analysis_with_netflow_and_ntop

PRTG is very popular and has a free version available.
https://www.paessler.com/network_monitoring_tool

Decide what you want to see, then decide which tool(s) most easily allow
you to do that.



You could also use Wireshark.

https://www.wireshark.org/

Like Paul said in his detailed reply.

Wireshark is indispensable for drilling down to see exactly what a
certain piece of traffic is all about, but it's completely the wrong
tool for stepping back and trying to look at the big picture.

I use tcpdump and Wireshark at least a few times per week to help
clients resolve specific network or application issues, but I don't see
any way that it could help me to aggregate and understand what's
crossing a LAN.

--

Char Jackson

On Fri, 26 Oct 2018 03:30:56 -0400, Paul wrote:

The OP wants to know about traffic on remote machines,
viewed centrally from a single machine. It can still be
a fun project. I don't know if I could arrange to monitor
a large number of machines this way or not.

https://serverfault.com/questions/36...with-wireshark

ssh root@sniff_server_ip -p port tcpdump -U -s0 'not port 22' -i eth0 -w - | wireshark -k -i -

You can also build a router, with a regular PC. I found
a quad port LAN card for under $100 on Newegg, which is
an amazing price. But you do need some PCIe slots wider
than x1 lane to make it work, and not all PCs will be a
good platform for the exercise. My current PC, I could make
a seven port router out of it, but I'd have to use my
cheesy PCI video card to complete the project.

Once you've built a central machine like that, fitted
your monitor, then you can look at any traffic your
heart desires. However, it won't tell you what's wrong
with the ATT box. It just adds new hardware to the picture :-)
That's probably not what the OP wants to hear.

Tangent: To anyone reading above and thinking, "Hmm, I can build a
router with a regular PC?", yes, you can, and you don't need any add-on
Ethernet cards. Paul suggested a LAN card above because the goal here
was to capture and analyze the LAN traffic, but if you just want to
build a router, the minimum number of ports needed is one. One is all
you need. (Router on a stick) You can stack as many different subnets on
that single port as you need, in the same way that you can stack
multiple IP addresses (from the same subnet or from different subnets)
on any Windows PC. The primary reason for adding physical ports is to
alleviate traffic bottlenecks, not to gain additional routing
functionality. Routers don't care how many ports you have. If you're
trying to sniff traffic, though, then that's a different story. Then
again, a hub or a device with a span port is probably a better choice
than trying to build your own solution. Well, maybe not a hub, since
they're ancient tech, probably hard to find, and probably limited to
10Mbps in theory (in reality, because of the collision domain, you might
see significantly less than 10Mbps of actual throughput). Fun projects,
though.


--

Char Jackson