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I am new to networking so pardon if this is a stupid question.

I want to see how my users use the internet bandwidth. I have around 50 Users in the network and I am using a checkpoint edge series firewall as a gateway for the internet. Checkpoint does not provide any report related to bandwidth utilization so I am looking for a another server to place between the firewall and the LAN switch to monitor the bandwidth(Sever monitors the interfaces while forwarding traffic back and forth).

Is that possible to do?. If possible please suggest me some tools. Or are there any other ways to monitor the internet usage of my users?.

Thanx.

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    Did you check with Checkpoint? They make multiple tools/software to do this, as do other 3rd parties such as Solarwinds, etc.
    – TheCleaner
    Feb 10, 2013 at 17:41
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    mrtg, pastmon are obvious candidates.
    – symcbean
    Feb 11, 2013 at 1:13
  • 2
    darkstat may be appropriate.
    – mgorven
    Feb 11, 2013 at 21:35
  • @TheCleaner I tried SNMP it shows the total bandwidth of the interface not by individual users. I tried Solaris as well as preasler. Both does the same. Do you know any application for IP base bandwidth monitoring with SNMP? Feb 13, 2013 at 8:24
  • @symcbean I checked them definitely try them out when I find some free time. Thanx alot. Feb 13, 2013 at 8:25

2 Answers 2

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I am sure you can get the utilization of the specific port of the firewall if you enable SNMP.

However your best bet here is to use something like Squid as a proxy server between the firewall and the users. You then need to setup all computers to connect to the internet via the proxy server (the most easy way to do this is with a GPO if you are running Windows). This will allow you to:

  • Control which websites your users are allowed to access.

  • Generate a report of what websites the users are visiting and how much traffic they are using. A good tool for this is SARG. Very easy to setup and use.

  • Block ads, this saves ALOT of bandwidth.

There is plenty of documentation around for setting up Squid and SARG is literally an apt-get/yum and then edit the simple configuration file.

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  • Thanx for the nice idea. I will definitely try your solution. Feb 13, 2013 at 8:21
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Checkpoint makes multiple software "blades" that interact with their firewall gateways.

See here: http://www.checkpoint.com/products/index.html#management

and then look at the software to see which one(s) will get you what you are looking for.

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