Monitoring Mac Network Usage

[dstranathan]

I provide IT support for an executive who lives in a rural area and relies on a AT&T-provided Cellular (Mi-Fi) hot spot for his home office iMac. His AT&T bill has recently skyrocketed. He swears that he is not streaming a lot of media or downloading a lot of content - other than emails and casual web surfing.

I have been tasked with purchasing and managing software that can help determine what Mac apps are consuming all of his allocated cellular data.

His iMac will be enrolled into JAMF soon, so I will be able to communicate a litle better with his Mac in the future (until now, he physically brought it into the office once a year for updates, etc)

Does anyone have any suggestions on a utility that can monitor (and most importantly log) all his inbound & outbound data?

[mpermann]

@dstranathan give Little Snitch a look.

[bpavlov]

Activity Monitor gives you some idea. It starts tracking once its open if you want something visual. Go to the Network tab. Is it also possible that there is another device connecting to the Mi-Fi that isn't the iMac? And does he understanding that video streaming contributes to data usage (would hate to make the assumption that he knew when he didn't)?

[dstranathan]

I need something that can be submitted to him and our Telcom team in the form of a report that can be evaluated, etc. Ultimatley it will compared with our AT&T bill.

I'm not concerend with other devices at this home. Im tasked only with the iMac which is the primary computer in his residence/office. His other devices (iPads and iPhones) are celluar too, and are in an unrelated data pool. He has been instructed to not use Wi-Fi on those devices, etc.

I figured Id start with Little Snitch first. Been a while since I used it.

[millersc]

Might check out MenuMeters. It might fill a short term gap. I haven't looked into where it's pulling it's data, but it might be worth something to look at.

[thoule]

Overall, it should be noted that you are fighting an uphill battle. The Mac is not designed to work like that. Applications, including the OS, habitually download updates in the background. Web browsers 'precache' links you may click next for faster browsing. The Mac OS and applications tend to not be a bandwidth sensitive platform...

[dstranathan]

Im simply tasked with helping figure out why his data usage has quadrupled in the last 60 days. Nothing more. I just need to isolate the iMac to determine if it is the culprit or not. Open-and-shut-case...I hope. Eventually his new housing development will get a terrestrial cable provider.

[kenergy]

Take a look at http://peakhourapp.com/ maybe that will help, or you can use the nettop command

[dstranathan]

Peak Hour looks pretty sweet. So does Bandwidth+.

I have to keep it failry simple and clean, since the target audience will be an end user... who happens to also be a high-level executive.

His AT&T data account uses ~6GB per month over the last 3 years. Last 2 months were nearly 36GB per month. Time to send in the "crime scene investigators".

Thanks

[Look]

36GB
Might want to make sure there are no unexpected devices connecting to the hot spot while your at it...
Or does the Mi-Fi somehow know what devices to charge against?

[dstranathan]

Great question, but Im only respnsible for the Mac itself. Other IT team members are looking into other devices, including the Wi-Fi and cellular topology, mobile devices, Windows systems, etc.

My marching orders are simple: "Stake-out the Mac for questionable behavior for a month and see what's going on". I suspect it will be a simple oversite (grandkids are streaming Netflix on some rogue Android tablet etc)

[mm2270]

Has the Mac been upgraded to a new version of OS X recently? I'm guessing you may have already gone down that route, but thought I'd ask.

[dstranathan]

I doubt he has done any major OS updates, but I will know soon enough. His iMac is (ironically enough) one of the only Macs that currently is NOT managed with JAMF - That's going to change soon. I'm enrolling it into JAMF and installing monitoring software next week.

[drenwick]

Hi guys.
Check out TripMode (http://tripmode.ch)

Also: for overall mobile data usage visibility: Wandera (http://wandera.com)

Cheers

dave

[dstranathan]

Thanks @drenwick

TripeMode was awesome. Just what my executive needed. Shows exactly what apps are using the network, and has a "kill switch" to stop any potential "cuplrits". No-brainer for $7.00.

[russeller]

@dstranathan I came across this post and noticed what looks like the uptime next to your TripMode app in your screenshot.

Is that part of the TripMode app or a separate utility that displays the uptime?

I see that there are some free utilities out there but curious what you were using. I work for a K12 and might be a nice reminder for teachers/staff to reboot their Mac laptops once in awhile without having to display jamfHelper messages to them ask them to reboot. Again, they'll probably ignore it, but at least our Help Desk could see that when they remote in and gives them a clue as to the last time it was rebooted. Thanks.

[dstranathan]

@ssrussell No, that's ADPassMon (https://github.com/macmule/ADPassMon/releases)

[russeller]

@dstranathan Thanks! I should have known.