Router sniffing

[pcdumby]

As you can see by my userid I don't know much about computers. My children do though, and so are always a step ahead of me. Which I wish was different.

I have a router in the house. Thus we have wi-fi. It is something like 64 bit encrypted, if that makes sense to you.

I would like to periodically check to see what the children are doing on their machines. All in the house are connected to the router. Is there anyway to stiff the wi-fi to know what they are doing, and essential obtain any passwords that they may have to their different applications.

Like I said, I am not too up on computer stuff so this may be something impossible that I am asking. But thought it wouldn't hurt to ask.

Thanks.

[MaDef]

I don't think the tos here allows anyone to help you learn how to hack. (one of the mods I'm sure will weigh in). I can tell you that most routers these days can log incoming and outgoing traffic, (ie; they log the local IP, the remote IP, and the port number.)

As for keeping an eye on their computer use, and what you're children are doing, well, when my child was a teenager I was the administrator on her computer (which gave me unrestricted access) and her account was restricted. her internet access was also resticted to certain times via the firewall most routers also have that setting. Alot of Internet service providers also supply parental controls which you should look into.

[z1p]

MaDef, that all sounds like good advise and on target. The logging offered by routers vary quite a bit and logging all the inbound and outbound connections all the time most likely will affect the performance of the router.

Most likely the router can be used to lock out certain sites or limit the when they can access the internet. I personally lock out internet access parts of the day. Initially I got some complaints, but not for long. Now they just know what hours they may be allowed on.

[MaDef]

I keep forgetting that part, there's always a trade off between functionality and performance.