Excessive network traffic -

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Tue, Oct 30, 2007 at 11:09:12 -0400,
  Bob Goodwin <bobgoodwin at wildblue.net> wrote:
> 
> I need to find what is driving the usage numbers, they were dropping 
> until about a week ago.  The solution may be to put the boys back on a 
> dial-up or their mother may just leave them without internet?  But that 
> doesn't define/identify the problem.

You might try a traffic shaping solution. Linux provides very powerful
traffic shaping tools. Using them still takes a bit of learning, but if
you can figure out how to distinguish the different categories of traffic,
you should be able to prioritize or limit it in a way that meets your needs.