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I'm on a office network and there are around 12 PCs that are connected to a switch and then to a Prolink Router. Now the Internet connection is very slow and I'm the one who manage all the computers. I want to monitor bandwidth usage of each computer on the LAN. how can I achieve this using my computer. I cannot install any software on the client computers other than mine.

I tried wireshark but, it only shows my network usage so there is no use with the data I get from it. Is there any specific software that I can use within my PC to get the bandwidth details of other computers. I'm on a windows 7 x64bit PC with admin privileges.

Thank you.

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  • As an aside, I would plug a PC or laptop direct into the router, ping 8.8.8.8. Then plug into the switch and do the same; I would be surprised if a user was hogging bandwidth!
    – Dave
    Dec 18, 2012 at 10:56
  • what would i need to analyse in the ping command! Dec 18, 2012 at 11:01
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    If your router or switch provide SNMP protocol access - you can access router/switch on SNMP port, authenticate and you will get some stats. SNMP is a Simple network Management protocol. It could possibly give you some numbers abouth bandwith usage and so on. If you want to examine all the traffic from all of the computers and the only thing you can do is to use your current PC - you can use CAM flood attack to force switch to behave like hub. Then open wireshark and you will see all traffic from all PCs in the network.
    – mnmnc
    Dec 18, 2012 at 11:01
  • @DimalChandrasiri - just to see how long the ping takes. For example, if pinging the 8.8.8.8 is quick via router but slow via switch, then it indicates the issue with the switch or the network, but, if it is slow from router, then it could be router or line. Although MNMNC's comment looks very promising too.
    – Dave
    Dec 18, 2012 at 11:05
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    bandwith utilization calculation using snmp: cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk648/tk362/… I am pretty sure you can use Cain&Abel tool to perform CAM flood.
    – mnmnc
    Dec 18, 2012 at 11:06

1 Answer 1

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As a couple of the others have pointed out. The answer lies in using SNMP which the Prolink should support.

You will need to look in the prolink's settings for SNMP references. Ideally using SNMP v3, direct the output to the IP address of your PC.

Then you need some receiving software on the PC. I've used the Kiwi Syslog Server before because it is easy to set up and use. It isn't free but there is a trial which works fine for 14 days which may be enough. Otherwise there are several other tools that can be used including PRTG Network Monitor (which has a freeware version).

You will then need to familiarise yourself with the various counters that the router produces. This is easier if there is a Management Information Base (MIB) for the router but you should find that your SNMP viewer software will have a generic router MIB that should suffice. It generally takes a bit of experimentation to find the most appropriate counters.

You should now be in a position to monitor the throughput of the router.

If you want to do this kind of monitoring with Wireshark, you need a Promiscuous Mode driver for your LAN connection and you need the monitoring PC to be in line with the data that the other PC's are sending to the router. In the days before switches were common, this was easy. These days, the easiest way is to make the PC into a router (for which you need two network cards) and force all the traffic through the PC - probably not something you want to mess with quite honestly.

The third method to do this would be to get the information direct from the PC's. However, this would require you to be an administrator on the Windows network in use (or have administrative rights on each PC). You can then use the built-in remote admin and monitoring tools provided by Microsoft to monitor each PC's use of the network.

Bear in mind when monitoring bandwidth, that you will never get better than around 80% utilisation of a network.

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