Is there anyway of seeing what is connected to the internet through a network.

The internet connection in our house has slowed down loads recently. Sometime one of us will be downloading something when we are out, but means it slows it down for everyone else if its a high transfer rate.

Is there anyway of viewing the internet connections so we can easily see what is taking up all out bandwidth.

Cheers

re you on a wireless network? have you secured it?

The only (simple) way I can think is to either use an old hub (ie a real hub, not a switch) or a proper managed switch capable of setting one of it's ports as a mirror.

Then use a linux box - any old Pentium class machine will do - with an extra network card in promiscuous mode. Run something like 'iptraf' and the job's a goodun.

Chris

By the sounds of it you must be running a router of some type in which case most of them have a page somewhere in the config that shows connected clients, that would help you rule out anyone piggybacking on your connection.
Mac

On my router I've set the access list and filtered by mac address so I know it's only me on the web

there are some free tools that tell you what ports are open if you're suspicious of a machine doing things in the background, try tcpview:
http://www.sysinternals.com/NetworkingUtilities.html

Ned.