home networking monitoring tool

Rick Deckard

Hi Lads,

I have 3 laptops going through one wifi connection. Even when all laptops off the router wifi light is still blinking like mad.

Is there any software i can install to monitor the up/down traffic on my router?
I tried googling for info, but only get back it helpdesk software.. spiceworks and the like

Thanks,

Peter

JDxtra

Your router should have logs - at least of which machines are actively connected. The WiFi light does blink all the time anyway as it's sending broadcast messages to say "Hi, I'm here".

jpl888

If you want to see what wifi traffic there is use something like Aircrack-ng.

Download Backtrack or Ubuntu. The wireless chipset will need to support monitor mode. Some do some don't. You could post your pci vendor and product IDs for the wireless card, from driver details in device manager and I'll be able to give you an idea if it will work.

As long as you have WPA/WPA2 encrypted wireless network, with decent sized key, you don't need to worry about hacking attempts. If it's WEP somebody could've easily got in.

Rick Deckard

Cheers for getting back lads, few things to tackle there..

Skalragg

wireshark shows all traffic in detail

http://www.wireshark.org/

jpl888

Skalragg wrote: »

wireshark shows all traffic in detail

http://www.wireshark.org/

Ordinarily that would be a good choice and my own recommendation. However, the OP seems to want to capture wireless data to see what is going on (as his router wireless light is flashing furiously even when all his machines are switched off). Unfortunately Wireshark is a bit limited where it comes to capturing wireless traffic, especially with Windows see http://wiki.wireshark.org/CaptureSetup/WLAN

runswithascript

jpl888 wrote: »

As long as you have WPA/WPA2 encrypted wireless network, with decent sized key, you don't need to worry about hacking attempts. If it's WEP somebody could've easily got in.

Can't WPA/2 be cracked overnight on a standard home computer?

jpl888

I think you might be thinking of WEP.

WPA with a good key is a lot harder to crack. It certainly isn't in the domain of the average user with a computer.

CabinteelyGuy

LA3G wrote: »

Can't WPA/2 be cracked overnight on a standard home computer?

Thats WEP it can be done in two hours with a decent nic and decent quad core system.

jpl888

It can be done even quicker than that it just depends how quickly you can collect IVs and you don't need a quad core system either.

MunsterCycling

Average time to crack WEP is about 5 - 10 minutes using Backtrack and injecting IVs into the Wifi network, if you are looking at doing it passively/quietly then the time rises exponentially as you have to wait for the network traffic to generate enough IVs to be able to crack the key.

Rick Deckard

cheers for all that lads, it's a long digit only wpa key

turns out my NAS has a torrent client built in.. no need for laptops to be on for dl's..

jpl888

MunsterCycling wrote: »

Average time to crack WEP is about 5 - 10 minutes using Backtrack and injecting IVs into the Wifi network, if you are looking at doing it passively/quietly then the time rises exponentially as you have to wait for the network traffic to generate enough IVs to be able to crack the key.

Just a small correction. You don't inject IVs you inject ARP requests which generate IVs.

And it can take some time to generate enough IVs even in "active" mode if the signal to and from the AP isn't good.

So in summary to the OP, the only thing WPA is realistically vulnerable to is dictionary attack. A long key with numbers and symbols in is the safest.

MunsterCycling

Thanks Pat

cantthinkof1

Solarwinds offers a collection of free tools for network monitoring

www.solarwinds.com