General Questions

My son installed M0n0wall but has now moved to Europe. It works fine, but there is a constant traffic load of 40 - 80 Kbps with no Internet usage I can see. That's like HALF my limit for the month. (And I AM exceeding my limit inexplicitly.) What's wrong? What do I do?

What do I do?

Off the top of my head:

1. Read the monowall handbook (http://doc.m0n0.ch/handbook/), particularly section 5 on Firewall rules. The forum is a good resource if you need clarification on specific points. http://www.grc.com is another good primer on general network security.

2. Make sure all your computers are off or disconnected (turn of monowall) when not using the internet.

3. Ask your son to manage your monowall remotely. He may have to walk you through a few settings to give him access.

4. Find yourself a new wiz.

I hope this helps. Managing a firewall router doesn't have to be terribly complicated, but like anything, there is a time investment to get you started.

db

Sounds like one of your PCs may be infected.

Take a look at:
http://192.168.1.1/diag_ipfstat.php  (replace 192.168.1.1 with the IP address of your m0n0wall).

This will show you where the traffic is coming from and where it is going.

Roy...

in addition to Roy's suggestion, you may want to enable logging on your pass rule on the LAN interface, though only temporarily as you likely don't want that much log volume long term unless you're syslogging off to another host.