Measuring actual download usage

[Pofadda]

Can anyone say if VM can supply ISP-only up/download usage of individual users, or can I find this info somewhere in Self Help? I browsed to the Cable Modem but saw nothing there.

Maybe some setting/hack could total only the stuff actually passing to/from the modem's address?

Before anyone suggests such tools as BroadcastChoice's BDM or SurplusMeter for the Mac (my main machine), remember these apps measure all (home) network traffic and that includes inter-machine and maybe printer traffic too. With daily backups and media streaming across the network, this figure would be meaningless for assessing download bandwidth.

[Peter_]

The is no hack or software available to measure the throughput of the modems bandwidth.

[Andrewcrawford23]

Can anyone say if VM can supply ISP-only up/download usage of individual users, or can I find this info somewhere in Self Help? I browsed to the Cable Modem but saw nothing there.

Maybe some setting/hack could total only the stuff actually passing to/from the modem's address?

Before anyone suggests such tools as BroadcastChoice's BDM or SurplusMeter for the Mac (my main machine), remember these apps measure all (home) network traffic and that includes inter-machine and maybe printer traffic too. With daily backups and media streaming across the network, this figure would be meaningless for assessing download bandwidth.
only way it to build a linux.unix system as a firewall rotuer and use iptables and other tools to build a system graph of outgoign ingoign traffic to the network on eth0

[kwikbreaks]

Not to everyodies taste but I flashed my router with Tomato firmware and that has reasonably comprehensive facilities for measuring bandwidth used. If you have a NAS device you can have it store the data across manual reboots although a power outage will still cause some loss of data.

[RainmakerRaw]

I know you have a Mac, and as such presumably run OS X at least as much as you do Windows. In that case the following suggestion isn't likely to be much use to you, but just in case anyone else can use it or finds this thread through search:

Networx (http://www.softperfect.com/products/networx/).

It has a portable and installer version, runs on x86 and x64 from Win2k through to the latest OS, and does not count local traffic if you tell it to exclude it all. Multiple instances across a LAN will communicate with each other if desired, to give you a "this machine" and "total LAN" traffic report broken down by daily, weekly and monthly usage. So I can check just my internet usage, or that of the kids, or my Mrs, or everyone combined etc. It's free, too. :)

I found it very handy, and hopefully someone else will too.

[Pofadda]

A whole year has passed and I apologise for not thanking you for your help. I no longer have a Windows (or a Linux) box running 24/7 to do this job, alas.

This issue has reared its head again, so I'll now look for a Linux solution that might work or be adaptable to OS X.

Any clever scripts, anyone?