[clug] Tracking network usage

[Tony Breeds]

On Tue, Oct 11, 2005 at 07:30:35AM +1000, Neill Cox wrote:
> I have a home network with a number of untrusted clients (ie teenage 
> children
> who last month chewed through 80% of my bandwidth allocation in 50% of the 
> month).

<snip>
 
> Any pointers/cluebats gratefully received.

I think, while not quite what you asked, a "captive portal"[1] style
solution would work.

Essentially it would go a little something like:
* machine DHCP's
* user logs into machine
* user opens web browser, which is rediercted to you local firewall,
* user authenticates
* firewall adds IP to forwarding chain.
* after some elapsed idle time (or when user logs out at webpage)
* firewall removes IP from idle chain.
* repeat from "user authenticates"

It certainly adds an annoyance factor to useing the network, but with
customisation/iron fist ;P I think it could work.

You may only use the captive portal on the shared machines and just
account for traffic to/from the dedicated machines with iptables.

HTH

Yours Tony

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captive_portal

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