Tracking Usage

eburgtech

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Greetings All: Well, I'm not a member of any other online forums so I thought I'd ask here since you've all been so helpful. I'm a site administrator for a business and they've had me setup a pc with wireless for people to connect to the internet on their breaks. As expected, the privilege was abused and I've had to take it down until I find a way to track usage. The manager suggested creating logons for each user on the pc however, I really think that would take up the whole hard drive in space as there are about 20 users that will be using it at one point or another (plus tracking the usage through the event log seems to suck anyway). Currently they are connecting to a Linksys Wireless WRT54G router. I've looked to see if I could track usage from the router but still couldn't come up with anything useful.

Does anyone have any suggestions on what would be the best way to track this?
 
I would venture down the "Parental control" software path.
I know that my personal computer has Bit defender on it which comes with a parental control feature. You can set key words or websites that when a user accesses, the software sends an email to a specified account. I believe there are lots of software packages that do similar things, creating logs ect.... I would just google around a little.
I really do like the bit defender one, perhaps like their anti-virus they have a free version of the parent protection program?
 
Agree with Access_Guy

You should look into programs such as Net Nanny (Not free but if they are serious about it then they may want to cough up the cash) and the like, I think you can set time limits... but im not sure if thats done by user login or what.
 
Greetings All: Well, I'm not a member of any other online forums so I thought I'd ask here since you've all been so helpful. I'm a site administrator for a business and they've had me setup a pc with wireless for people to connect to the internet on their breaks. As expected, the privilege was abused and I've had to take it down until I find a way to track usage. The manager suggested creating logons for each user on the pc however, I really think that would take up the whole hard drive in space as there are about 20 users that will be using it at one point or another (plus tracking the usage through the event log seems to suck anyway). Currently they are connecting to a Linksys Wireless WRT54G router. I've looked to see if I could track usage from the router but still couldn't come up with anything useful.

Does anyone have any suggestions on what would be the best way to track this?

If the suggestions do not solve your issue, then it would help to know what you mean by "the privilege was abused".

There are several things that could be considered "abuse".
 
Thanks everyone. Interestingly the problem we've had isn't the content the users are going to, it's the duration of their time spent on the web. Basically, taking half hour to hour breaks instead of 10-15 minute breaks. (Personally, that's a management issue but not up to me:confused:) So essentially, I just need to track how long everyone is logged on. What I've done is set up user accounts for each individual and they all have unique passwords. I've enabled the Event Viewer to track logon and logoff so that I can export to Excel and create a report of logon durations. If there's an easier way than this, that would be great. I looked into Windows XP Parental Controls and I don't think that fits this situation as we're not so much worried about the content as much as the time spent online.

Something else...This computer is connected to a wireless router I've setup specifically for this use. Previously (before the shutdown), individuals would bring their laptops in and connect that way. Obviously I can't track that in Event Viewer. However, I was thinking that I required the users to have their machine hard-configure for connectivity to the wireless (i.e. by MAC address) that the event viewer on the pc the wireless router is connected to could track those. Does that make sense and does anyone have a better way to track my wireless laptop users?

In case anyone's confused on the configuration, I've attached a quick mspaint diagram.
 

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That was my suspicion. It was length of time not content that was getting abused.

Sounds like you need some type of metering like an internet cafe or hotel might use.
 

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