Network Monitoring?

[ihearthorses]

Hello,

I have a macbook pro and a comcast cable internet connection running through a D-Link DI-624M wireless router. I live with a few roommates, and every time one of them turns on his computer our connection slows to a snail's pace. He's kind of the black sheep of the house, so my question is: Is there any software that I can run from my computer to check how much bandwidth is being used by each computer on my network, to find out if the lag is caused by him? Also, is there any way to limit the bandwidth that each computer can use and give priority to specific IPs? Thanks in advance for any responses.

 

[After G]

I think you can only monitor how much bandwidth each person is using with your computer if you pass the internet connection through your computer before it goes to everyone else.

However, there is a way you can monitor if your roommate is killing the internet connection for everyone.

Go into your router settings under Status > Stats. There is an indicator of how many packets your computer is receiving/sending. If the numbers increase substantially when your roommate is using the computer, it's a safe bet that he or she is.

If you are willing to get another router to solve your problem, I can recommend the Linksys WRT54GS. It has QoS, which allows you to set aside a certain amount of upload (to prevent being unable to connect to websites), and to prioritize bandwidth by Ethernet port and hardware address.

Your router might be able to do this as well, but you would have to explore the menus, as I couldn't find this feature in the user manual.

 

[Heb1228]

Most routers will let you assign a priority level to a certain MAC address. Your router should be able to give you a table of addresses and you should be able to figure out which address belongs to each computer, then set that roommates priority level to low.

 

[ihearthorses]

Thanks for the advice, guys. I have been thinking that a new router might solve the problem, so thanks for the recommendation. The router I have currently gives no way to change priority, unfortunately.

 

[velocityg4]

Is your roomate using a file sharing program? If he is ask him to limit his upload speed somewhere around 20 to 25 kbps. This fixed our slow comcast problem when my roomate started using bitcomet (for legally available public domain stuff I'm sure ). Anyways he killed our bandwidth and this solved the problem.