House Share and Broadband.

[#1]

Hi All,
I live in a house with 3 other people (4 in total) and we have FTTC and a 120GB D/L limit, so in effect 30GB each per month (not including free time 00:00 - 08:00).
It's been agreed that if anyone goes over there 30GB limit they will be liable to pay any charges, but how do we police/enforce this?
Yes, I could use a network traffic analyser / sniffer and map it to MAC addresses of the internal devices (mostly Desktops and Laptops but we all have Smartphones to), but I am looking for a nice easy way.
Anyone got any ideas?
D

[#2]

The fact is if anyone goes over their 30GB limit it's quite likely there won't be any charges because someone else will be under and the total will remain under 120GB.  That's called statistical multiplexing.  But I don't think there is a 'nice easy way' to accomplish what you want.

[#3]

I'm about 90% sure that the combined household usage should not go over 120GB, however if it does then it is already too late to point the finger / make someone pay the penalty.
One house mate has already signed up to a movie streaming service, would only take a couple of HD movies a week (about 2G an hour in HD) to put us all in trouble.

[#4]

Have you looked at upgrading to the new 80/20 Fibre with 250Gb allowance ? you would start a new 18 month contract though...
http://community.plus.net/blog/2012/08/14/superfast-plusnet-fibre-gets-even-faster/
http://community.plus.net/8020-fibre-faq/

[#5]

Quote from: DavidJBrown

One house mate has already signed up to a movie streaming service, would only take a couple of HD movies a week (about 2G an hour in HD) to put us all in trouble.

More like 3-5 gig each if in HD, a 2 hour film on normal quality via iplayer/channel5 etc are usually 1.5-2 gig and HD usually doubles that amount.  Other than using a good router with mac address monitoring, what you are asking isn't that feasible without buying a £120-£200 router

[#6]

One option will depend on what operating systems you are using on the machines, but also if you have any separate client devices such as an Xbox, PS3 and such.
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/tbbmeter.html
Tbbmeter allows it to be installed on a Windows machine. This will log the individual machine, however, there are some extended functions that serve your overall purpose.
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/tbbmeter/stats.html (will only work if you have a Thinkbroadband account)
You can then use the online view to see the collated details and break it down per machine.

[#7]

Thanks for that.
We have a combination of Win7 and Mac OS, along with IOS and Android Smartphones. Also Xbox/Xbox360 and PS3. To make things more difficult we also do not have a server or central PC (So I can't leave anything on packet watching).
Does the router you supply handle QoS and will it provide any stats? Ideally tx rx up/down and mac would be ideal.
D

[#8]

Hi there,
Our routers do display stats, however user QoS (by IP, by vLAN etc) can be done but only via a CLI and isn't something we can support you openly with I'm afraid.