Who is eating up my Internet Data Plan?

[Geek-9pm]

This is from dictation. 

Hello, folks.
Again I need help with something that should be easy but it's not. Somebody is using a lot of my Internet data and I don't know who. Besides myself, there are four other people that use the Internet here on my premises. They are all related to me and I don't want to accuse any of them from overuse of the Internet unless there is really some documented proof. But that's not easy.   

My router will show me the MAC addresses of everybody that has acquired a DC HP assignment. But it does not tell me how much data they have used. I have no idea how to set up my router to log the consumption of each person's data usage. In fact, I don't even know if it's possible with this router. The router is a cable router made by Motorola and it's very, very similar to the standard router used by Comcast.

I have talked to Comcast about this issue, but they have not offered any concrete solutions to my problem. Of course, I could move up to unlimited data, but that would almost double the amount of money I have to pay for my Internet.
Right now we are paying $66 a month for a Jacobite of data transfer. That should be more than enough for all of us, you would think.   : (But it appears that somebody is leaving something on for hours and hours at a time and not shutting it down.

So I am asking, is it some kind of software, firewall or utility that would help me track the usage of each MAC address on my local network?

A suggestions will be appreciated.
Thank you for any help.   

[Geek-9pm]

Meanwhile, I found this:

11 Best LAN Monitoring Tools

Has anybody used any of them ?  Will they help me? 

[2x3i5x]

Hey Geek,


Just a thought: if you have an android phone, you might wanna install a network monitoring app such as this one: Network Fling Tools and check out their network monitoring by device capability.

Good Luck, maybe someone can recommend you a desktop solution that they like

[DaveLembke]

I have a tracphone with like 180 MB data plan for 90 days. I generally always have my 3G disabled and I rely on hot spots. But when I am away from a hot spot and need internet I then turn on my 3G. Apps that update trickle away your data plan and I had a weather app burn up my 180MB data plan in 3 weeks with my 3G left enabled when I first got my phone 4 years ago. Additionally the more apps you have that update on a regular basis the more the trickle turns into a garden hose on full blast for flow of consumed data against the plan. So I went through a process of trying out apps to find apps that have less ads and apps that work that use less data, as well as not having so much installed to my phone because I had news apps, weather app, and a forum app that those were burning through data quickly with the advertising being the most damaging because the ads had short clip videos etc.

I looked for apps to set permissions on what apps are allowed to use 3G vs WiFi and didnt find anything to set rules for which connection to use. So I have been just using this method of avoiding burning of my data plan.

If someone made an app that was a traffic cop setting which apps have permissions to 3G or hot spot wifi they could make a killing on that app by people who have limited plans that dont want their data plan running out like a bucket of water with pin holes in it and more apps the more holes running out the volume. However when trying to think of a way to make an app like this work, it would have to be something that works along the lines of wireshark sniffing to where traffic is outgoing and if the wifi is seen as enabled and the connection method allow all traffic and if 3G is active a rule applies to where a white list needs to be created by the user of what to permit and to blacklist all other traffic. But thats beyond my programming skills.