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Dhruv Bhutani has been writing about consumer technology since 2008, offering deep insights into the personal technology landscape through features and opinion pieces. He writes for XDA-Developers, where he focuses on topics like productivity, networking, self-hosting, and more. Over the years, his work has also appeared in leading publications such as Android Police, Android Authority, CNET, PCMag, and more. Outside of his professional work, Dhruv is an avid fan of horror media spanning films and literature, enjoys fitness activities, collects vinyl records, and plays the guitar.

You might think that monitoring your home network requires an expensive, extensive dashboard or perhaps some enterprise-grade software. I used to think the same. However, the more time I’ve spent running, configuring, and monitoring my home network, I’ve realized that’s not necessarily true. While it’s true that you might want something a bit more advanced if you are a network administrator, you’ll be surprised by how much you can learn about what’s happening on your network using tools you already have or free software that takes minutes to set up.

There’s no getting around the fact that home networks keep getting more complex over time. Between phones, laptops, TVs, smart speakers, security cameras, and more, there is a constant stream of data flowing between the devices and the broader internet beyond your home. Keeping an eye on network activity is not negotiable. Not only does it help you eke out the best performance, but it also gives you insights into security and privacy. But it doesn’t require an engineering degree either. Here are three ways I regularly monitor my home network, none of which require expensive software or subscriptions.

How to monitor your home network traffic with a Raspberry Pi

You don’t need expensive equipment to monitor your home network. All you need is a Raspberry Pi and a little time to set it up.

Your router’s built-in tools

Start with your router because it already knows everything you need to know

If I had to pick a place to start, the router would be it. It’s almost criminally underrated as a network monitoring solution. It makes sense; the router sits at the center of your network, sees every device on the network, and handles every connection too. It’s no surprise that it knows everything worth knowing about what’s happening on your network. And yet, most people rarely log in to their router’s software after the initial setup is done.

Modern routers, even the more basic options offered by ISPs, usually offer a surprisingly robust monitoring dashboard. Just log into your router’s admin page, and you’ll find a list of connected devices. That’s your first step towards keeping tabs on what’s connected to your network. You’ll be able to get a better glimpse at devices that you might’ve forgotten about or devices that shouldn’t be on your network in the first place.

Any half-decent router will also show you real-time bandwidth usage. You can see what device is consuming maximum bandwidth and how much data it has used over the last few days. So, if your internet is feeling slower than usual, this can be one of the quickest ways to diagnose what’s hogging up the bandwidth. Some routers may also show you a running log of connection history, which can help you spot when devices joined or left the network, and track patterns. The only real limitation here is depth. Unless you have an SMB-grade router, most router dashboards aren’t really designed for traffic analysis or long-term history. But for everyday home network tracking, the details here may just be all you need.

Set up a Pi-hole

Using Pi-hole to turn DNS requests into a monitoring tool

Pi-hole is a popular ad-blocking tool for your entire home network. And yes, it does that very well. But what makes Pi-hole even more versatile is the visibility it offers into your network. Every device on your home network makes DNS requests to work. By watching those requests, you can get a pretty clear idea of what each device is up to.

The Pi-hole software itself is free and can be deployed on lightweight devices like a Raspberry Pi. Just pop open the dashboard, and you’ll get a glanceable look at which of your devices is being the chattiest. You don’t just get to see which phones are generating maximum requests; you also get to see which domains are being accessed the most frequently. This helps you paint a better picture of what’s happening on your network.

Since Pi-hole stores long-term trends, you can also see changes over days and weeks. You can see if a traffic spike is due to an update being downloaded or if a particular device is constantly connecting to a server when it shouldn’t be. There’s a lot of value in that data.

Home Assistant

Turn Home Assistant into a network awareness hub

Okay, this is a fairly uncommon way of monitoring a home network, but depending on what you want to achieve, it can be pretty nifty. Yes, Home Assistant is best known as a smart home platform, but since it integrates with practically everything, including routers, you can get some solid insights right alongside your light switches.

Home Assistant can be an interesting way to have all your network-connected entities show up on your dashboard with their current online and offline status. You can use it to track uptime and even monitor overall bandwidth if your device or router supports it. For example, I have widgets showing my NAS’s current bandwidth consumption. If you want, you can create automations that notify you or trigger actions when bandwidth consumption exceeds certain limits. You can set up a separate home page for this with overall analytics or pop into the settings to see the data on a per-device basis.

I get it’s not the most conventional way to monitor your home network. However, if you’re already set up Home Assistant, it’s not much of a stretch to set up, and it might be all the data you actually need.

Monitor your network using the tools you already have

Monitoring your home network doesn’t always need high-end tools. In fact, it’s very likely that you already have all the software you need to keep tabs on your network activity. Be it your router, an easy-to-set-up Pi-hole, or the ever-so-versatile Home Assistant, there are more than a few ways to see what your network is up to, and to manage it better.

Pi-hole

Pi-hole is a network-wide ad blocker that acts as a DNS sinkhole, preventing unwanted ads, trackers, and malicious domains from loading on any device connected to your network. It runs on lightweight hardware, such as a Raspberry Pi or in a virtual machine. By intercepting DNS queries, Pi-hole blocks ads before they ever reach your browser or apps, improving speed and privacy. It also provides an easy-to-use web interface for monitoring and managing network traffic.

Home Assistant

Home Assistant is the best way to connect your smart home systems together.