You have helped me previously with my pc build but i have a slightly different issue at work. I help run my family business and as the only relatively skilled IT person i tend to deal with everything tech related.
My shop where i work (and its just me) has seen a jump in internet usage from an average 30gb to 70gb+ in the last three months. There is no explanation for this, i have not done anything different than the last god knows how many years nor has Logan suddenly upped his video upload rate and thus forced me onto youtube more often in the day.
I am hoping you can answer the following;
1) can i somehow see what and when was used, is there software for this or do i access this via the router (d-link dsl 2640R) i have spoken to my isp but they are utterly useless.
2) has my wireless been comprimised, can i check or should i just change the network code?
3) can i somehow monitor the usage from now on to check its accuracy and whats a could program for this, can be windows/mac/linux.
If you want to see whats going on on your network, you could use wireshark. But you really need to know whats what when trying to sort out an issue.
You router may have a usage tracker in it, but I doubt it.
The best way to see ALL the traffic, is to tap the wire between all the machines and the network boundary (between router and modem or router and switch) with something like this http://hakshop.myshopify.com/products/throwing-star-lan-tap
As for the wireless, your router should list of mac addresses connecting to it. If there are ones you don't recognise, then the security maybe affected. I advise you change the password to something with a minimum of 16 characters and if you are not already, use a minimum of WPA2 encryption.
I personally don't use any software to track usage (as I do so from my router) but either wait for someone to suggest something or find something on google.
Have you recently installed new machine and they are downloading updates? Are you using any form of network caching (pfsense has this functionality) that will provide a file locally if it has already been pre-fetched by another machine?
Thanks for your suggestions and reply. There is no new machines installed on the network but youve given me enough to look into as a start so thanks again.