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Can Wireshark show a real time chart to show which PCs are consuming how much bandwidth.

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Hi WireSharks,

Can I use WireShark to track volume of traffic per device on a home network ?

I have a home network with about 12 devices. Sometimes the network slows down and I would like a real time chart to show which PCs are consuming how much bandwidth. Can WireShark do that ?

For my purposes I do not even need the frames to be stored, I just need them to be just quickly inspected so that that the tool can provide a visualization, and ideally recent history, of network traffic per (PC or other device on the LAN) so I can identify and prove bandwidth hogs, ideally with time based trend graphs.

So assuming that my NIC support promiscuous mode, and assuming I plug directly into the router so the Hubs do not filter out Internet Traffic, can Wireshark help? or else, can you suggest or recommend and other tools than can do what I am looking to do ?

Thanks very much,

Terry Clancy

asked 04 May '14, 12:53

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terryclancy
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accept rate: 0%


One Answer:

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Wireshark / tshark always store packets to file and build their analysis on that. It's not possible to just visualize them and throw them away afterwards in real time.

I guess what you need is a Netflow/Openflow tool, not a packet capture. For tools like that you need a device that can provide netflow statistics, e.g. a switch or a router that comes with that feature.

answered 04 May '14, 13:15

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Jasper ♦♦
23.8k551284
accept rate: 18%

edited 04 May '14, 13:16