[ale] iptraf / bandwidth monitoring

[Christopher Fowler]

I have 2 machines in a colo facility and I too have a limit per month.
I think mine might be around 300gb.  You brought up an interesting
question.  I would like to know what is going on bandwidth wise and not
just for the 300gb reason but a spike that is not warranted could point
to a hack on the box.

I loaded up net-snmp on both boxes.  On my desktop I loaded up mrtg and
I now have MRTG monitoring those machines.  But this only gives me
averages and allows me to see spikes.  It does not count totals.  Or at
least I don't have it configured correctly.

The only idea I can see is to at 11:59 on 02-01 use snmpget to get the
value of IP-MIB::ifInOctects.2 and  ifOutOctects.3.  Once you get that
value then periodically get that value again and calculate the
difference.  That will tell you your bandwidth usage for that period.
Your script will have to be intelligent because I believe that is a
32bit value that can roll over and a reboot of your server will return
that value to 0.  This is just an idea and I'm sure there is a better
way.


On Tue, 2006-01-31 at 13:47 -0500, Charles Brian Quinn wrote:
> Just a semi-linux related, semi-off-topic quick question for those who 
> work in/for/around data centers.
> 
> For dedicated servers or collocated servers in data centers, what tools 
> are used to monitor bandwidth usage?
> 
> Let's just say, for instance that I have a dedicated server with a 200 
> GB transfer (and $0.89 per GB thereafter) included in the "dedicated 
> hosting" plan.  A friend puts up his portfolio on said server and it is 
> immensely popular.  4 days later and 35 GB of web traffic transfers 
> (webstats show), not to mention other ssh/rsync traffic, I'm starting to 
> worry about going over that 200 GB transfer limit, having never come 
> close ever before.
> 
> How is web traffic versus rsync/ssh versus dns versus any IP traffic 
> monitored, and is there any way on the (linux-based) server itself to do 
> this type of passive monitoring/logging (iptraf, maybe), to compare to 
> the provider's when I get the bill for the next month?
> 
> Thanks,