Monitoring other comps on my network???

Hello I just recently got my wireless connection up and running on two machines in my house. Both machines have Windows XP pro mine is using Service pack 2 and the other is running the original XP. I have a D-Link 524 wireless router and the other comp has a dlink pci card...

I am downstairs and the router is connected via wire to my computer and wireless to my sons computer upstairs..Is there a way that I can tell what he is doing online from my computer? I'm mainly interested in knowing what programs(ports) are accessing the internet. I don't want him using any of the file sharing programs (his video games and general browsing are fine). I don't need to know what urls he is visiting although I wouldn't mind being able to tell that as well.

I generally trust him to be online but I've had to delete file sharing programs before and I feel better safe than sorry...

I'm an extreme newbie when it comes to wireless so forgive me if this is a silly question, I just browsed through 7,000+ headers on here trying to find an answer and I am really lost...

Reply to
larry
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If the computers are connected to the same wireless network and the WLAN card on your computer supports promiscuous mode (not all do; you just have to test it) you can use a sniffing program like Ethereal

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to see the pakets the other station is sending and receiving. Ethereal will automaticly decode the pakets, so you will see many information without being a network specialist.

Thomas

Reply to
Thomas Krüger

"larry" wrote in news:I6Wod.33269$ snipped-for-privacy@fe2.columbus.rr.com:

If the router has logging and most do, then you can enable the log and the router will track all inbound and outbound traffic to the router by date and time, IP and port being used. Then you can use something like KIWI Syslog Daemon or some other router log capturing tool to accumulate the logs from the router. KIWI Syslog Daemon is free and the free version log accumulation is not active it goes to 100 log entries before it rolls over.

The paid for version you can accumulate the logs. With a log utility, you will be able to see everything in real time.

Duane :)

Reply to
Duane Arnold

Wow I feel very dumb... Thanks for your help I downloaded ethereal but cant for the life of my figure it out. I have spent the last day and a half messing with it but my networking knowledge is nill. I will try to read all of the manuals again....

thanks again Larry

Reply to
larry

Thanks for your help Duane I'm going to do a bunch of reading and try to figure out how to use programs both you and Thomas recomended.

Larry

Reply to
larry

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