Monitor your own ADSL usage

[mupet]

One of my frustrations was to remain within the boundaries of the TelkomADSL internet product. I have rules i.e. no mp3's movies etc. but kids will be kids and I found last month suddenly someone had gone nut's and I had exceeded my limit. The problem then was - who dun it. The adsl.Telkomsa.net site is great to show you which day(s) the problem happened but I needed more detail.

Now - I have my router setup as a bridge and run PPPoE clients on each machine (this is the only way if you want to use other services on ADSL besides internet)

I downloaded the MRTG 2 bundle for XP (MRTG_Bundle_v2.0.exe) and installed it. I found that you can identify a PPPoE interface separately on each machine by it's hard code address (00-53-45-00-00-00, this maybe XP specific) I then enabled SNMP on each machine.

I can now see when and how much each machine is doing and this corresponds to the Telkom supplied graph. You can now see Telkom only measure traffic that is off saix.net (You will be surprised how much bandwidth you use)

The MRTG config file looks like this (use it, don't use it)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
# Created by
# c:/mrtg/mrtg/bin/cfgmaker --output c:/mrtg/mrtg/bin/192.168.10.1.cfg 192.168.10.1


### Global Config Options

# for UNIX
# WorkDir: /home/http/mrtg

# or for NT
# WorkDir: c:\mrtgdata

### Global Defaults

# to get bits instead of bytes and graphs growing to the right
# Options[_]: growright, bits

WorkDir: c:/mrtg/wwwroot
PathAdd: c:/mrtg/rrdtool
LogFormat: rrdtool

######################################################################
# System: MyPC-1-7GIG
# Description: Hardware: x86 Family 15 Model 1 Stepping 3 AT/AT COMPATIBLE - Software: Windows 2000 Version 5.1 (Build 2600 Uniprocessor Free)
# Contact:
# Location:
######################################################################

### Interface 1 >> Descr: 'WAN (PPP/SLIP) Interface' | Name: 'WAN (PPP/SLIP) Interface' | Ip: '192.168.10.1' | Eth: '00-20-ed-71-af-ec' ###

Target[PPPoE_SAIX]: .1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.10!00-53-45-00-00-00&.1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.16!00-53-45-00-00-00[email protected]:
SetEnv[PPPoE_SAIX]: MRTG_INT_IP="192.168.10.1" MRTG_INT_DESCR="MyPC PPPoE client"
MaxBytes[PPPoE_SAIX]: 64000
Title[PPPoE_SAIX]: Traffic Analysis for MyPC PPPoE client
PageTop[PPPoE_SAIX]: <H1>Traffic Analysis -- MyPC-1-7GIG PPPoE</H1>
<TABLE>
<TR><TD>System:</TD> <TD>MyPC-1-7GIG in </TD></TR>
<TR><TD>Maintainer:</TD> <TD></TD></TR>
<TR><TD>Description:</TD><TD>PyPC PPPoE SAIX client</TD></TR>
<TR><TD>ifType:</TD> <TD>PPPoE (6)</TD></TR>
<TR><TD>ifName:</TD> <TD>'WAN (PPP/SLIP) Interface'</TD></TR>
<TR><TD>Max Speed:</TD> <TD>512 kBytes/s</TD></TR>
<TR><TD>Ip:</TD> <TD>192.168.10.1 (MyPC-1-7GIG)</TD></TR>
</TABLE>

### Interface 2 >> Descr: 'WAN (PPP/SLIP) Interface' | Name: 'WAN (PPP/SLIP) Interface' | Ip: '192.168.10.100' | Eth: '00-20-ed-71-af-ec' ###

Target[PPPoE_SAIX_2]: .1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.10!00-53-45-00-00-00&.1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.16!00-53-45-00-00-00[email protected]:
SetEnv[PPPoE_SAIX_2]: MRTG_INT_IP="192.168.10.100" MRTG_INT_DESCR="Nick PPPoE client"
MaxBytes[PPPoE_SAIX_2]: 64000
Title[PPPoE_SAIX_2]: Traffic Analysis for Nick PPPoE client
PageTop[PPPoE_SAIX_2]: <H1>Traffic Analysis -- Nick PPPoE</H1>
<TABLE>
<TR><TD>System:</TD> <TD>Nick in </TD></TR>
<TR><TD>Maintainer:</TD> <TD></TD></TR>
<TR><TD>Description:</TD><TD>Nick PPPoE SAIX client</TD></TR>
<TR><TD>ifType:</TD> <TD>PPPoE (6)</TD></TR>
<TR><TD>ifName:</TD> <TD>'WAN (PPP/SLIP) Interface'</TD></TR>
<TR><TD>Max Speed:</TD> <TD>512 kBytes/s</TD></TR>
<TR><TD>Ip:</TD> <TD>192.168.10.100 (Nick)</TD></TR>
</TABLE>

### Interface 3 >> Descr: 'WAN (PPP/SLIP) Interface' | Name: 'WAN (PPP/SLIP) Interface' | Ip: '192.168.10.5' | Eth: '00-05-5d-5c-08-75' ###

### Interface 4 >> Descr: 'WAN (PPP/SLIP) Interface' | Name: 'WAN (PPP/SLIP) Interface' | Ip: '192.168.10.10' | Eth: '00-40-05-ae-cd-4f' ###

Target[PPPoE_SAIX_3]: .1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.10!00-53-45-00-00-00&.1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.16!00-53-45-00-00-00[email protected]:
SetEnv[PPPoE_SAIX_3]: MRTG_INT_IP="192.168.10.10" MRTG_INT_DESCR="Jo-PC PPPoE"
MaxBytes[PPPoE_SAIX_3]: 64000
Title[PPPoE_SAIX_3]: Traffic Analysis for Jo-PC PPPoE client
PageTop[PPPoE_SAIX_3]: <H1>Traffic Analysis -- Jo-PC PPPoE</H1>
<TABLE>
<TR><TD>System:</TD> <TD>Jo-PC in </TD></TR>
<TR><TD>Maintainer:</TD> <TD></TD></TR>
<TR><TD>Description:</TD><TD>Jo-PC PPPoE SAIX client</TD></TR>
<TR><TD>ifType:</TD> <TD>PPPoE (6)</TD></TR>
<TR><TD>ifName:</TD> <TD>'WAN (PPP/SLIP) Interface'</TD></TR>
<TR><TD>Max Speed:</TD> <TD>512 kBytes/s</TD></TR>
<TR><TD>Ip:</TD> <TD>192.168.10.10 (Jo-PC)</TD></TR>
</TABLE>

 

[caroper]

Great tip.

Downloading now.
url is http://open-innovations.com/mrtgbundle.html
for anyone else that is keen to try.

Cheers
Chris

 

[mupet]

By the way - don't use "public" as your community string.

I picked up this morning that someone on the out side was snmp polling my machines.

It's a good idea to change your community and also specify an address of which ip to accept snmp requests from.

 

[jfrancis]

Good on you, mupet. MRTG is one of the most tested pieces of software on the Internet today -- used by thousands of ISPs and it is surprising how many "elite" network providers use it as well (alongside RRDtool).

Great security tip too.

Now if only Telkom would listen to you and got rid of those horribly lame, clumsy, inaccuarte and very blocky graphs... this from an organisation that claims to be the "mostest and elitest" network provider to end all network providers.

I giggle uncontrollably every time I see them... []

 

[mupet]

With MRTG inplace you have your own detailed stats, you can use what Telkom provides to alert you to a problem on a specific day and then home in on your own graphs.

My stats are much higher than Telkom show - I count about 10 gig's this month thus far - Telkom show 1 gig. If you are carfull from were you download it makes a big dif.

 

[Andre]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by mupet</i>
My stats are much higher than Telkom show - I count about 10 gig's this month thus far - Telkom show 1 gig. If you are carfull from were you download it makes a big dif.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Care to share some of these sites with us? []

 

[jfrancis]

Let me tell you a secret (I suppose not one now...). The first month I connected (mid September) I got some *bonus* bandwidth. I got download speeds of up to 1.1 Mb/s (international). And downloaded in excess of 5 Gig before I was "capped".

These days I cannot get over 440 Kbps -- no matter what I try.

All these things tell me that after 5 years of implementation and testing, these guys have still not got it quite right.

The moral of the story? Never lose your sense of humour. Best to laugh it off -- sometimes not worth getting upset about. Telkom is such an old joke -- but still worth a giggle at times -- especially when it's all that one can do.