Network activity monitor

[Bill]

On 10/26/2010 6:29 PM, rikona wrote:
> Hello Bill,
>
> Wednesday, October 20, 2010, 8:24:12 PM, Bill wrote:
>
> B>    On 10/20/2010 5:14 PM, rikona wrote:
>>> I'm having some ongoing issues with Comcast. I'd like to be able to
>>> monitor network speed/activity [just on one Ubuntu box, not the
>>> entire local net] on a continuous, moment-by-moment basis, and a
>>> log to remember start/stop times might be nice but not necessary.
>>> Graphical, like htop, would be preferred but not essential as long
>>> as it is continuous. What is the best tool to do that?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> rikona
>>>
>>>
> B>  Who doesn't have p[problems with Comcast. There customer support is
> B>  terrible
>
> Terrible is WAAAAY too mild a word for it...
>
> B>  especially when you have a network issue.
>
> They just deny everything. The fact that they change my IP address as
> often as three times a day, often right in the middle of a large
> download, is somehow my fault and they are blameless.
>
> B>  Im a retired systems engineer and know when its them or there
> B>  equipment. I finally dumped them and went with ATT DSL and havnt
> B>  had any issues with them.
>
> They have a total monopoly here - no other choice, and they know it.
> It seems to be worse here compared to other places.
>
> B>  If you dont mind playing with snmp look up using mrtg.
>
> I was looking at that, and it would have a steep learning curve for
> me. Seems to be a popular topic for big-net monitoring, though...
>
> B>  It will give you a graph that displays allot of different info
> B>  depending on what you tell it to display using your servers web
> B>  server. It can do in and out traffic for any or all of your network
> B>  interfaces. You can specify how often to up date the image. You can
> B>  display other things like temps, disk space, amount of people
> B>  logged in and so on. As long as snmp can get the info you can
> B>  display it.
>
> Also, as far as I have been able to determine, my router does not
> support snmp.
>
> I was looking for something simpler. My win box has a firewall status
> popup that gives instantaneous speed + lots of other net info for that
> box. An info display like that would be nice on the UB box too - don't
> need the firewall part, though.
>
> Thanks much for the reply.
>
What router are u using? If your using a Linksys look up www.dd-wrt.com. 
I would suggest anyone using a Linksys change the OS to DD-WRT It will 
alow to use snmp plus a hell of allot more. DD-WRT also has graphs for 
its interfaces. DD-WRT works on several brands of routers.

To run MRTG it takes snmp and a web server. That server can be M$ or 
Unix. Here is a down and dirty quick guide to the basics of the whole 
thing. http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Multi_Router_Traffic_Grapher

I will say that due to MRTG and SNMP I was able to tell that one of my 
servers had been hijacked. It showed way to much traffic one night on 
its network interface. Seems someone had installed some script through 
IRC do they could store a mp3 of some CD. People were downloading it.