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I have a very irritating smart phone which is auto connecting to the Internet. The phone itself does not have any network monitoring tools so there's no way I can figure out which program on the phone is requesting the connection to be switched on.

I've reconfigured the connections on the phone to connect to my home wi-fi network by default. Is there a way I monitor its network usage?

My network setup is something like this -

My desktop is connected to the DSL router over ethernet, but other mobile devices connect over the WiFi. All devices/computers are in the same subnet and are visible to each other.

Any suggestions (monitoring tools for Win7) would be welcome.

-Thanks!

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2 Answers

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1. Disable wifi on the smartphone

My iPhone does this sometimes, and it's really annoying. This isn't a direct answer to your question but a workaround. Disabling wifi would help.

2. Install custom firmware on your router

dd-wrt is an alternate firmware for your router. It will allow for increased functionality and some extra tools (including a bandwidth analyzer) on the router itself. Just make sure your router is supported. If it isn't, there are other firmware options available.

note: the downfall of using software to monitor your bandwidth is that it needs to be running 100% of the time (no downtime) to accurately measure the amount of bandwidth. Because of this, it just isn't a good idea to use a software solution, unless you have a great reason to do so.

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My favorite tool is Wireshark. It will allow you to monitor every single packet that goes through your setup.

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Well, I tried it...I guess I'm using it wrong or something. I can't seem to get it to capture anything other than traffic to/from the ethernet card. – abjbhat Jul 5 '11 at 3:31
I would suggest creating a network bridge between the wireless card of a laptop and the Ethernet port. Then create an ad-hoc network for your phone to connect to. Set either the wireless card or the virtual network bridge as the capture device. – emb1995 Jul 5 '11 at 3:35
Hmm, I guess I'm going OT here...but would setting ip.addr == <IP of Phone> work? – abjbhat Jul 5 '11 at 4:38
Where are you finding this option? – emb1995 Jul 5 '11 at 5:23
In Wireshark's filter text box. – abjbhat Jul 6 '11 at 9:05
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