Measure bandwidth in local network

Gerson Acevedo · ‎03-30-2015

I have an issue.

I need to measure the bandwidth use in a hospital. They basically dont have any administration. They have a few switches , Wireless and everything goes to the same Internet exit. However one of the doctors have a VPN with a firewall connected to a terminal PACS. so basically someone send PACS pictures to his server in his home using the VPN. Now the VPN is slow sometimes. And we need to know if someone is using the bandwidth in useless things like youtube for example. So I need to go to the site measure the bandwith.

Topology-

Router(exit)

-

PC with Terminal for PACS----Firewall-----Switch----AP

They have 1 MBPS on site symmetric. Which I think is kinda low for a VPN service transmiting heavy images. Will probably someone is using youtube.

So if I have heavy traffic in the LAN. I could tell them that the performance issue is because someone is wasting bandwidth. The other thing is the 1MBPS is not enough for the VPN service. Which I want to recommend more bandwidht but I need to have some kind of data to back up my proposal.

Let me know if you know a good software to do this. And if you have suggestion well welcome.

Thank you

mvaughan1 · ‎03-31-2015

You should mirror the router switch port and put Wireshark on it using a laptop, etc. That will tell you exactly what traffic is going in/out and in what quantity.

monitor session 1 int f0/1 (ingress/egress port) both

monitor session 1 destination interface f0/2 - where you can connect the laptop to view what the mirror on f0/1 is doing.

You'll capture all traffic going to your WAN, and on a 1 Mbps link you should see it all with no problem. Not sure what Wireshark has as far as traffic analysis these days, but it's free.

Bolding doesn't seem to be consistent, even with edits, sorry.