Thanks very much for your excellent expose James.
I have resolved my query to the group and appreciate the time people have put
into it. I hope others have learnt from this too.
My solution is a fundamental parenting technique. I.e. Tell them that unless
they cut back they will have to pay me upfront for the extra data plan I will
purchase to resolve the problem they created. Given they won't part with any
cash, they will cut back or I will cut them off the network and they will have
to get by on wireless Internet; which will still cost them heaps and their
speed will drop off. This reality check has been received with begrudging
acceptance.
I call it Tim's command line interface :-)
Ta
Tim
Sent from my iPhone
On 30/12/2010, at 1:52 PM, James Devenish <jndeven...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Tom,
>
> There are some practical reasons why there's no "obvious" solution to
> this problem for everyone. The saving grace is that you might be able
> to short-circuit the problem by focussing only on the "excessive use"
> aspect. Let me step through the possibilities so you can see the pros
> and cons. But be warned: I have no solution for you, only ideas that
> might help you along the way.
>
> The first hitch is the "rules"...Everyone's broadband contract has
> different rules. So you'll need to know about any "inclusions" and
> "exclusions" that apply to your account. For example, do you know if
> you being are billed for "uploads" as well as "downloads"? Do you have
> any "free zone" downloads? Are you billed for "TCP/IP overheads"? Most
> people will get "free uploads" or "free zone downloads", but not
> necessarily either or both. Multiplayer gaming involves both uploading
> and downloading. Most people who do broadband gaming will require some
> kind of free zone for it to be fast enough and cheap enough.
>
> The second hitch is that there's no device in your house that records
> all the information that you need. The only way to generally
> understand your bill is to combine information from multiple sources.
> And that's the problem. You've told us that your network consists of 5
> Macs, two PCs, an Xbox, a cable modem, and maybe a printer and maybe a
> Time Capsule backup too. So that's a combination of products from 4-6
> different corporations, in a mixture of Ethernet and wireless. For
> simplicity of discussion, I'm going to refer to these as "a dozen"
> devices.
>
> Although every individual device can count the "bytes" it's
> transferred to and from the network, you need the data analyzed at a
> much more sophisticated level. Consider that a Mac could transfer
> bytes to a printer, from a Time Machine, to/from the freezone, etc.
> All of this interferes with the results you want, and must be filtered
> out! And that involves some heavy duty monitoring. And somehow you
> need to monitor every connection of every PC, every Mac, and the Xbox.
> So as Rob alluded to, the final solution will need to involve data
> from your Telstra cable modem/router. It is the only device that can
> track the Internet usage of all dozen devices.
>
> Unless your cable modem contract is very straightforward, the solution
> will be quite specific to Telstra cable. So you should enquire with
> Telstra as your first option. To get a meaningful report on your
> household Internet usage, you'll need to solve the following problems:
> * Monitoring every connection made by every one of the dozen devices
> on your network, and identifying their usage in a useful way ("Tom's
> iMac", "Jane's MacBook", "Billy's PC", etc).
> * Correctly taking in to account the inclusions and exclusions of your
> Telstra cable modem contract by subtracting any eligible "free zone"
> or "uploads" from the report.
> * Removing "internal network usage" from the report (i.e., you don't
> want internal throughput like printing, household file sharing, or
> Time Capsule to be counted as network usage for the purpose of your
> Internet usage report).
>
> By now you might be convinced there's no direct solution, and that's
> why no one's been able to give you a silver bullet. Sophisticated
> users would install a custom gateway router with its own Ethernet and
> wireless in between the cable modem and the rest of the network, and
> then install and configure their own monitoring software, and divert
> their dozen devices off their modem and onto their custom gateway
> router. (The institutional approach.) But most people are simply stuck
> with the modem that came with their contract, and it simply doesn't
> provide the information you need.
>
> And here's the other rub: only Telstra knows that is free and what is
> billed, but the only thing Telstra can see from its own end is your
> household's aggregate usage. It simply cannot see your Macs, PCs,
> Xbox, etc. So Telstra simply can't tell you which devices have been
> using the most data. You'd have to piece together most of the
> information yourself and then craftily subtract your freezone usage
> (if applicable).
>
> Here are things that probably won't work naively:
> * Installing monitor software on all your Macs and PCs. Why it won't
> work: internal network usage such as printing and Time Capsule will be
> erroneously included in your "usage", as will any Telstra free zone.
> Plus, how are you going to monitor the Xbox?
> * Installing a traffic monitor on your Cable modem. Why it won't work:
> you probably can't install software on your cable modem. Instead,
> you'll need to extract reports from the Cable modem and filter them to
> remove free zone, and to map the usage back to your individual
> devices. But each device can change its network address daily, so how
> are you going to keep track of which network address matches which
> device? And does your cable modem even give you this information?
>
> If you are billed for all uploads and all downloads (no freezone),
> then the network traffic bytes counted by your cable modem will within
> a few percent of your Telstra bill (depending on how TCP/IP overheads
> are counted). Then you simply need to map the bytes back to the names
> of the devices on your network in a meaningful way ("Tom's Mac" etc).
>
> Perhaps your only saving grace is if you have truly "excessive" usage
> on your network, it'll be easy to spot regardless of your contract
> conditions. But unless you can tend to your dozen devices every day,
> you're going to have to have the information stored automatically and
> continuously in the background.
>
> On the other hand, a miracle might have occurred while I wasn't
> watching and somehow this has all been solved in the last 24 hours...
>
> James
>
>
>
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