While I'm not a troll by any means, the level of hostility and such has led me to feel it would be a good idea to apologize to everyone for having wasted their time with a ridiculous inquiry. Trolling was never my intention, but it appears I may have done so unintentionally by asking to be informed by people that are experts of many fields, and intelligent and well educated, so you all have what apology I can offer. And I'm quite serious. I don't think I can really say anymore, so I'll leave it at that, link my client to this article, and let him judge for himself.

I'm sorry that you feel this way but i'm simply trying to educate a very difficult client that I've had no luck getting through to him by talking to him myself. I rather wish I Could give you all his phone number so you could all call him and tell him how paranoid he is.

I totally agree, but I needed to look for any potential alternatives if I could.

I'm afraid it's not a trolling, it's more like a really stupid client that I need to inform.

Thanks for your very informative answer. Really, all this article is for is for me to have some 'second opinion' proof at how unfeasible this project is. I never thought it was feasible but he insisted that I 'do the research' to find a way. Among most of my research was a bunch of unclear 'it's not feasible' conclusions, but a whole line of slashdotters making fun of my article and telling me to 'get a new client' and book myself into an aslyum should be enough for him. (I hope)

I have to agree with you, actually. I need a new client lol. If only I could get away from this one first. I like your answer in regards to the zoo, I'll have to keep that in mind with alot of the other morons I get suckered in to working for.

Honestly, the whole point of this article was not only to inform myself, but to inform my client how ridiculous this reasoning is. I'm pretty much being forced to ask slashdot about this in order to prove my point to him.

To clarify, I have studied formal networking at a local college. Alot of my article was truncated, apparently because it was too wordy, but at least the core of the article is there. My comment in regards to my education was to help everyone understand that i'm not a redneck hilbilly that's never set up a subnet before.

By screenshot I was referring to from the analyzer software or something similar.

I allready KNEW alot of what you're telling me..it's excessive, unecessary, paranoid, etc...but I needed to get a second opinion anyway, for the sake of sanity. (Obviously sanity seems to be at a short supply somewhere in all of this), so I linked my client to this article so he can see for himself how excessive his requests are. I agree that monitoring at nework like this is way over the top, that somone needs to get booked into an asylum, (Probably me for even thinking of posting this to slashdot lol), and the whole 'legal' issue thing is him being a nutcase over the leagal matters like he usually is (but not to this extreme). Unfortunately I am the only source of real tech advice for him, so I have to at least address the problem instead of saying 'I refuse to handle your case' or something. I need some reply for him at least. I do understand the situation he's in, but it's nothing like an affair. I know this family well, and this is more of an 'old friend of the family' type of client than a paying one, although i'm sure i'd get some amount of renumeration, but it's also an interesting scholastic exercise in advanced networking. Obviously it's not exactly feasible, like I originally thought, but I thought maybe I had missed a development since I went to college, and wanted to see what the experts had to say. (It's really telling when most of the replies tell me to book myself into an asylum lol)

Okay, this made me laugh out loud, and that's pretty rare!

I admit the scope of the project is overwhelming, and I've told my client that he's asking for an NSA quality project. I will direct him to this post and your replies to help him to better understand the nature of his requests. Also, it appears that my article was truncated before being posted, so some of the explanatory bits were cut off, although the core of the question is still there for the most part. And yes, this is an actual client, not myself. I already suspected what most of you were saying, and tried to tell him that, but computers are a big 'mystery box' to him, and I can't seem to nail stuff home on my own. (IF it was myself i would have all already solved this problem.) Also, I'm a little surprised at some of the hostility and non-seriousness i've seen here, but I suppose it is to be expected considering alot of the drama and arguing i've seen going on in other arguments. When I originally wrote the article, I did specify 'serious answers only please, I don't want to start an argument, but a bunch of random answers that are unrelated won't help me solve this problem' And to be more specific, it's a home network with a cable connection. (I obviously can't be too specific due to his need for anonymity to avoid 'alarming' his family to his clandestine monitoring intentions). He does reasonable cause for suspecting something is going on and just needs to have information available to aid him in making decisions about some unusual behavior. and yes, I know that you can't get 'screenshots' right off a client PC through a network, by screenshots i meant some kind of recreation of a visited website, or just text information in printable form off some kind of analyzer software. I really would like to solve this problem, but I agree it's an excessive project. He wants the moon without having to go there to get it, type of issue.