Suspicious Upload Activity? - Hardware & Software

So the last 2 months my roommates and I have gone over our bandwidth by a lot. My roommate has been watching our usage graph and it seems like we're burning through a lot of our bandwitch on upload alone. Yesterday's upload amount is total bs because none of us were doing anything that intensive. Either someone is seeding a lot of torrent stuff (which i asked around, nobody is) or something else is happening. How can i monitor exactly what is happening with our connection? I want to firstly narrow down the culprit, since it has to be one of us that is uploading so much. One of my roommates leaves on the weekends and we've noticed that our upload usage is next to nothing on those days. Should we be suspicious of him? Or could one of our computers be part of a botnet or somesuch? [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/32yquGK.png[/IMG]

Assuming you're all on windows 7 or higher, you can check what process is using the network in the resource monitor (start > type "resmon" > hit enter). Under the Network tab sort "Processes with Network Activity" by "Send (B/sec")

If you're using windows there's a neat program called [url=http://www.netlimiter.com/]netlimiter[/url], it gives you a list of your applications that are running and how much download/upload they're using. You could use this spot the offending program. [editline]asf[/editline] Oh damn I didn't know windows had its own resource tracker. Use that instead of this program.

Cool, i'll keep it running on my computer to get an idea of my usage. I checked my roommate's and his has similar patterns to mine, so we are almost certain that my other roommate has got something funky going on. If it were a virus or some sort of botnet type thing, would the resource tracker see it?

It sounds like it's uploading an obscene amount, so I'm sure you'll easily spot it.

So my roommates both checked their laptops using resource monitor and neither of them seem to have any strange upload patterns. I'll verify this later tonight. The only other thing i can think to do is have all of us turn our computers off for a day and then check our usage for the day later at night, and if it's not at 0 then something is going on. Is there any way to monitor outgoing traffic through the router? It's a Cisco e1200... I'm looking through the control panel and i see a logging feature but it doesn't seem to do anything

You could set up networx: [url]http://www.softperfect.com/products/networx/[/url] It logs all download/upload activity on your PC, it can also be set up to work across multiple networked computers to show their shared usage and usage per pc. Keep in mind it also logs local traffic (the "ignore local traffic within your LAN" feature didn't work at all for me). So if you copy files to your roommates using the network it will be logged by networx. You can even set up networx to know your ISP allowance limit and to alert everyone on the network when you get within a certain percent (ie. 75% used). [editline]31st October 2013[/editline] To give you a basic intro, install the app on ALL pc's (make sure to allow it to autostart). After selecting your language make sure to choose the name of your network adapter from the dropdown list [IMG]http://puu.sh/54piA.png[/IMG] After that's done right click the tray icon and go to "settings". Go to the Advanced tab and tick "Synchronise usage data with other NetWorx instances on the network" [IMG]http://puu.sh/54ppk.png[/IMG] If you want to set up for the app to show your internet usage quota then right click the tray icon again and choose "Quota" to set it up. It's fairly straight forward and will even give you suggestions on how much bandwidth you can safely use that day. [IMG]http://puu.sh/54pyR.png[/IMG] Finally, right clicking the tray icon and choosing "Usage Reports" will give you a nice interface showing your own and all other network users internet usage. [IMG]http://puu.sh/54pDd.png[/IMG]

Nice, that's exactly what we need. This will help determine if the ISP is bullshitting us too. If the usage doesn't add up, i assume we'll have to contact the ISP and get in a little fight with them.

Or your neighbor is stealing your wifi.

[QUOTE=taipan;42711351]Or your neighbor is stealing your wifi.[/QUOTE] This is a possibility too. Also don't forget to check any other devices such as mobile phones and tablets.