Bandwidth monitor, is this possible?

deicist

Right, I'm lookin for a way to monitor total bandwidth use for a network.. at the moment the network consists of a draytek vigor 2600 router plugged into a 24 port switch... what I was thinking was if there's a way to put something between the switch and the router that does nothing but monitor the bandwidth. Ideally I'd like to able to access this device remotely so I can check the bandwidth use of a remote site.

So, any ideas anyone?

lemonlime

I'm not familiar with draytek vigor routers, but most routers support SNMP. You can find SNMP monitors (like Solar Winds 7.x Engineer's Edition) that will collect SNMP data from your router, and plot utilization graphs etc. Solar Winds is not cheap, but if a business is picking up the tab, it may be worth while investment as a network tool suite. There may be some free, open source SNMP monitors avaliable that you can use as well.

There are some other less graceful methods as well. You can use a packet analyzer like Ethereal on a laptop with two network interfaces, simply enable packet forwarding in your operating system, and allow all network traffic to 'pass through' the laptop before exiting the premesis. You can use ethereal filters to display only outgoing traffic, and use IO graphs to plot.

For long term data and to find trends, SNMP is your best option. As long as you have some way to reach that router via IP, you should be able to collect that data remotely, via VPN etc..

deicist

lemonlime you absolute star, SNMP is exactly what I was looking for

found a free SNMP monitor that does exactly what I needed (as well as lots of other cool stuff) called Online Eye here:

http://www.pmasoft.net/englisch/tor/SNMP%20Monitor.html

lemonlime

Glad I could help

tyciol

Would software like this work if we wanted to monitor the BW usage of a single home PC, or perhaps a small wireless network linked by a router to the host modem?

kryyst

If your router supports logging. Turn the logging function on and you can monitor bandwidth.

Tushon

If your router supports Tomtato or DDWRT, those both have bandwidth logging. That would be flashing your router to a new ROM but both come highly recommended.