Posted on 09/13/2010 3:51:27 AM PDT by Blueflag
The browser on the client converts the url into an IP address before it sends the request to your router. Your router doesn't know any URLs unless you perform a whois or reverse name lookup on each IP address.
Asking for that kind of information is asking for quite a bit of processing, and further network traffic.
Not impossible, but not as simple as you'd think.
Just based on the little bit of reading I've done following this thread, you may have to configure your router too, to send its activity reports to the machine running wallwatcher.
Configuring the router results in your machine having a (the) log file, having more storage space on the hard drive than the router does, etc. Wallwatcher is, I think, setup to read that file.
As for opening the wallwatcher dashboard or report viewer or whatever, I have no clue.
Here You Have
Will do.
Dinking around with Wallwatcher right now. It seems pretty good except *I* have to configrue my router to send logging infor to this PC or Wallwatcher logs nothing. I would have expected the SWA to do that for me. harrumph.
I don’t really speak router and have little confidence I can easily get the router cofig’d to send log to my pc.
My PC is .102 on the subnet, so maybe I can H4X0R my way in.
You are correct. “efforting” that right now. ;-)
True about the ‘reverse lookup’. Wallwatcher downloaded a 1.6 MB library as part of the install, and asked permission to dynamically update it. I didn’t bother to read what it was, but perhaps that is a directory of domains.
I’ll report back.
Looking at an online version of the wrt610n userguide: From the Router configuration "screen" (accessed using your browser, pointed to the local URL for the router ...
Also, the machine running wallwatcher has to accept the "traffic" from the router - just saying that any firewall on the PC needs to account for the router communicating something other than an e-mail or browsing traffic.
I think wallwatcher is a generic "read and transform a text file" tool. The various router manufacturers use different logging formats, and wallwatcher transforms "whatever" into a consistent form for you.
As for getting into your router configuration, use your browser (Firefox, whatever). My router is on 192.168.0.1; yours might be on 192.168.0.100.
Router config is mostly point and click - and you know the address you want to send the report to (that xxx.xxx.xxx.102 address), so you're well started on getting the data to move from router to PC.
OK, Wallwatcher *IS* now talking to my router.
In the Linksys/Cisco menu, it is Administration/ Log/ Enable Logviewer IP Address/ (set the .xxx of the PC running WW) Save Settings.
Refresh WW and you are good to go.
I happen to set my options to OUT only, but still getting a lot of data.
so my *only* complaint right now is that I am getting too much infor ;-)
BUT it’s working.
Thanks to all.
There you go. Technically, your router is sending info to your PC, which is putting the info in a file. Wallwatcher is reading that file as it grows; or in realtime.
The Router may have some tools to filter the information. I suspect Wallwatcher has lots of filtering tools.
Next week, or next month, or sometime, your router MIGHT assign what is now the .102 machine a different address. You should force a dance between the router and the .102 machine so that it (the .102 machine) always gets the .102 address.
Also, look into how wallwatcher prevents the log file from growing to occupy all of your hard drive.
Off the top of my head, I can't think of any other gotcha's.
We ran it on a small dedicated machine and set up each staff machine with a hard-coded IP address so it was easy to correlate the URLs visited with the requestor.
It also came in handy if we had an occasional problem with our DSL line. A quick config change to tell Wingate to use the modem instead of the NIC and they were back up emailing and surfing.
I’ve got it set to only keep two day’s worth of logs, so IN THEORY it should self-manage the file size, but I’ll watch it.
the filtering tools ARE good. I have EXACTLY the Display I want. (someday I’ll bother to learn the significance of the local and remote port numbers)
And yes, since my notebook PC travels with me, I’ll have to monitor that .102 is “live”. I may need to set this up on an old tower PC that never moves.
FWIW, WallWatcher is not password protected, but my PCs are. So for household use, folks should set their PCs to require a password to access the desktop.
Macs do this as part of the included Parental Controls. I know Windows 7 has extensive parental controls too, so I’d expect something similar might bein Win7. Haven’t played that far yet though.
My first response was NOT to look to MS for anything useful. I view MS as a necessary evil.
I looked up the Win 7 parental controls. They run on EACH CLIENT PC. They are designed to block sites and control time of usage. Not designed for admin monitoring.
Decent stuff, but not what I want.
But thanks!
Since you bumped this, I thought I’d let you know that the Wallwatcher software turned out to be exactly what I wanted. And it’s free.
Slightly techie install, but very manageable.
Thanks!
I think wallwatcher is getting raw information from the router, and it is wallwatcher that writes and prunes the log files on the PC it's running on. I'd trust wallwatcher to keep the file pruned.
That's to say, I don't think the router is making a text file, independently of wallwatcher. Both have to be set up and running, or else no information is obtained and written to a durable log file.
-- And yes, since my notebook PC travels with me, I'll have to monitor that .102 is "live". --
I presume that if the router can't communicate with the "logging machine," that it just loses the information. It's something I'd test, to make sure the network doesn't suffer (much) on loss of the logging machine. In the router menu, point to a non-existent machine (e.g., .222), and see what happens.
As for always getting the .102=notebook association, your router may ave a facility that assigns IP address based on hardware MAC address. Your router assigns the IP addresses on the local network, and it can be told to not hand out .102 to any machine except your notebook; and that if your notebook asks for a connection, to always assign .102.
Does wallwatcher provide an IP address to IP name facility? That was one of the things you were looking for. I'd think it would, it's easy enough to do.
Thanks BlueFlag
Well then, the best way is to set up a proxy server. They come from free to very expensive. I’m not familiar with the lower-priced or free ones, except Proxy+ looks pretty good, free for three people or $99 for five. For decent ones, in addition to the basic remembering of URLs, you’ll get per-computer or general block lists and other filtering, and you’ll almost always get the advantage of caching at the proxy to speed things up a bit. You of course get an added layer of security.
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