Monitoring traffic in my home network

I have a very irritating smart phone which is auto connecting to the Internet. The phone itself does not have any network monitoring tools so there's no way I can figure out which program on the phone is requesting the connection to be switched on.

I've reconfigured the connections on the phone to connect to my home wi-fi network by default. Is there a way I monitor its network usage?

My network setup is something like this -

My desktop is connected to the DSL router over ethernet, but other mobile devices connect over the WiFi. All devices/computers are in the same subnet and are visible to each other.

Any suggestions (monitoring tools for Win7) would be welcome.

abjbhat

Posted 2011-07-05T02:43:39.027

Reputation: 267

All smart phones nowadays need connection to check for software and application updates. If disabling automatic updating features does not stop that behavior then perhaps you have some malware on the phone. Is your phone rooted/jailbroken? – Igor Levicki – 2015-08-23T10:20:57.570

Answers

1. Disable wifi on the smartphone

My iPhone does this sometimes, and it's really annoying. This isn't a direct answer to your question but a workaround. Disabling wifi would help.

2. Install custom firmware on your router

dd-wrt is an alternate firmware for your router. It will allow for increased functionality and some extra tools (including a bandwidth analyzer) on the router itself. Just make sure your router is supported. If it isn't, there are other firmware options available.

note: the downfall of using software to monitor your bandwidth is that it needs to be running 100% of the time (no downtime) to accurately measure the amount of bandwidth. Because of this, it just isn't a good idea to use a software solution, unless you have a great reason to do so.

n0pe

Posted 2011-07-05T02:43:39.027

Reputation: 14 506

My favorite tool is Wireshark. It will allow you to monitor every single packet that goes through your setup.

evan.bovie

Posted 2011-07-05T02:43:39.027

Reputation: 2 758

Well, I tried it...I guess I'm using it wrong or something. I can't seem to get it to capture anything other than traffic to/from the ethernet card. – abjbhat – 2011-07-05T03:31:38.003

I would suggest creating a network bridge between the wireless card of a laptop and the Ethernet port. Then create an ad-hoc network for your phone to connect to. Set either the wireless card or the virtual network bridge as the capture device. – evan.bovie – 2011-07-05T03:35:50.127

Hmm, I guess I'm going OT here...but would setting ip.addr == <IP of Phone> work? – abjbhat – 2011-07-05T04:38:45.043

Where are you finding this option? – evan.bovie – 2011-07-05T05:23:07.423

In Wireshark's filter text box. – abjbhat – 2011-07-06T09:05:47.800

Yes it would work. – evan.bovie – 2011-07-06T12:50:44.390