OT: wlan connection control and monitoring

[vqdriver]

i need to find a wireless router or add-on that will allow me to monitor bandwidth usage of connected wlan clients. if i could see a history of the sites visited/visiting that's even better. all i can get out of my 3com routers are mac addresses which aren't helpful with a transient population of users.

[johnnymossville]

http://www.bandwidthmonitorpro.com/

Take a look at that one. I think it'll do what you want.

[vqdriver]

That looks to be a local monitor. I need to monitor all the connected clients on a given AP

[ultraman6970]

U can do this two ways (maybe more)

1 option, put a hub between you router and your network and a computer attached to it with a software that will monitor all incoming and outgoing connections, the thing will tall you everything. There is several software around that does this, but needs to be a hub not a swith because the pc basically will look all packets going out. U need to buy the software, dunno about your budget, maybe this is the cheapest way if your network it is pretty big instead of going pc per pc installing monitoring clients, unless u can set a script for auto installation or some other stuff. Since you know the subnet of your wireless just take a peek to that range and you are all set.

2 option, get a descent router like a sonicwall. This is seroious hardware ok? not the junk u buy in bestbuy. Some sonicwalls have wireless and have addons also, even you can set up CONCENT so if the guy wants to go to the internet needs to agree himself then saves a log also. Sonicwall devices are super expensive but not as bad as a cisco router.

3 option? maybe a cheap ass linksys can do it but not sure, those are home toys thats all.

Good luck

[xjoex]

I really like a tool called Project DINO, http://www.robonza.com/dino , I coincidentally wrote it.

It needs a feed of traffic in one of two ways, either from configuring a mirror port on the AP, (most new linksys and cisco can do this) or by running it inline between the AP and the upstream connection. Or the easiest way is if one of your network devices upstream (firewall or router) can do netflow exports, it can ingest that too.

Some of the features are plotting traffic, plotting flows, intrusion detection and more.

This graph shows the last 3 weeks traffic, grouped by week so you can look for anomalous traffic.
http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h85/boulderjoe/dino/weekly-report.jpg

summary report for a single ip:
http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h85/boulderjoe/dino/ip-report.jpg

Incoming connections
http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h85/boulderjoe/dino/top-incoming.jpg

Lots more features, but I don't want to go too far off topic.
-Joe

[Squint]

http://lifehacker.com/344765/turn-your-60-router-into-a-user+friendly-super+router-with-tomato