Bandwidth

[PaladinAmadeus]

Greetings all,

I am little new here, so I apologize for my lack of knowledge. To explain something of the hardware I am using, I run a HP G50 laptop with Windows Vista. My WiFi connection comes from a Linksys WRTG54 router, connected to a cable modem from Cogeco.

I live in an apartment that currently has limited bandwidth, limited to 10 GB per month. We keep going over, each month, which costs the landlord vast amounts of money. Currently, I cannot use Cogeco's member bandwidth tracker (odd problem). Anyway, there are four other users of this same internet connection, some are using their own routers. What I would like to have it a program the does the following, or at least as close to as possible:

-tracks bandwidth usage (time, how much, etc)
-tracks which router may be using the bandwidth
-tracks what the bandwidth is being used on (as in the websites that were accessed)

I would not think this is too difficult since we are all connected to the same internet connection, just using different routers (in some cases). And if anyone can throw in a good, rather basic explanation of bandwidth and how it works... that would be lovely.

Thank-you all in advance,

Amadeus.

 

[masteroc]

Just trying to get a better picture of the setup here, does the internet from Cogeco come to the apartment at any central point. For instance is there a main hub or router that the line comes in at and that feeds to your rooms?

 

[PaladinAmadeus]

Yes, I have access to the central hub. Down in my basement there is the main cable modem with the home's router (a dlink). That router is wired and wireless, and runs ethernet cables (four) to each apartment. To which most of us run another router (wireless).

 

[masteroc]

Well, if that router does not have some sort of built in monitoring software, I can only suggest that you either flash it with dd-wrt/tomato or put a smoothwall/monowall/pfsense router there that has a management console with bandwidth monitoring.

 

[PaladinAmadeus]

..wow... that was a lot of things I know nothing about. Mind explaining some of them? (What they are, what they will do... a price if applicable) There is no program that can do that without being part of the modem or router directly?