How can I monitor all and any Internet traffic from my home PC?

I would like to monitor all and any Internet traffic from my home PC to see what programs installed on my home machine are accessing the Internet.

I thought I could use Fiddler for this, but I noticed Firefox traffic doesn't show up by default; you need to do some setup.

What options do I have to monitor all traffic?

Solution 1:

I would recommend using TCPView which is part of the sysinternals suite. TCPView will show you all of the connections being opened by the TCP/IP stack and it will also show you the remote address of the system it is talking to across the net.

Solution 2:

Wireshark

The added advantage is that it is cross platform. Linux, Windows and Mac.

Solution 3:

How about Sysinternals TCPView?

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Solution 4:

NetWorx is a simple and free, yet powerful tool that helps you objectively evaluate your bandwidth situation. You can use it to collect bandwidth usage data and measure the speed of your Internet or any other network connection. NetWorx can help you identify possible sources of network problems, ensure that you do not exceed the bandwidth limits specified by your ISP, or track down suspicious network activity characteristic of Trojan horses and hacker attacks.

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The program allows you to monitor all your network connections or a specific network connection (such as Ethernet or PPP) only. The software also features a system of highly customizable visual and sound alerts. You can set it up to alert you when the network connection is down or when some suspicious activity, such as unusually heavy data flow, occurs. It can also automatically disconnect all dialup connections and shut down the system.

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The incoming and outgoing traffic is represented on a line chart and logged to a file, so that you can always view statistics about your daily, weekly and monthly bandwidth usage and dialup duration. The reports can be exported to a variety of formats, such as HTML, MS Word and Excel, for further analysis.

Solution 5:

If you're looking at a router, try to find SNMP data for it, then you can graph it with munin, mrtg, or a whole bunch of other SNMP handling devices.

If you're looking at a linux box, install something like iptraf (command line, ncurses traffic monitor), or munin (graphing util).

If you're looking at a windows box, perhaps use the Performance console in Administrative Tools.

If you had a cisco router capable of supporting NetFlow data, you could use this and a NetFlow listener to look at the traffic data.