Monitoring Link Speeds? (Software)

carstensdj

carstensdj

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Hi All,

I'd like to monitor the bandwidth (speeds) that my wireless links are using during the evening as my Wireless SP is claiming that our backbone link to the office is not fast enough. We are on an 11Mbps link, but the SP says that we need to be on at least 15Mbps due to new sites that are coming in. The issue is that this happens on a monthly basis and i am starting to feel like they might just be taking chances and trying to rinse money out of us (we pay R1000pm per Mb each time). I am by no means saying that they are doing this, but would feel alot better if i could monitor those speeds through my own software instead of just relying on their graphs as i dont know if they are genuine or have been tampered with to create the illusion of needing more bandwidth.

I have a program called "NetPerSec" which i use at home, purely to see what speeds my 3G is getting. I dont know if this program will give me enough info for averages, peaks etc for an evenings monitoring. What softwares can any of you recommend for me to implement on the 2x Stations which i would like to monitor the Bandwidth speeds on for the evening?

Thanks in advance! Much appreciated
 
If your ISP is saying you need more bandwidth are you actually experiencing any performance issues? If you're lucky you may find that public SNMP is enabled on the router, which should allow you to generate your own traffic graphs with something like MRTG. Otherwise you could ask them to enable it. You can use something like iperf to do end-to end testing, bearing in mind the usual factors like what's happening at all the hops in between and what's going on on your line at any given time. For a really basic test you can also script a wget download with verbose logging, which will give you average throughput (just depends if your problem is download or upload).
 
morkhans said:
If your ISP is saying you need more bandwidth are you actually experiencing any performance issues? If you're lucky you may find that public SNMP is enabled on the router, which should allow you to generate your own traffic graphs with something like MRTG. Otherwise you could ask them to enable it. You can use something like iperf to do end-to end testing, bearing in mind the usual factors like what's happening at all the hops in between and what's going on on your line at any given time. For a really basic test you can also script a wget download with verbose logging, which will give you average throughput (just depends if your problem is download or upload).
Click to expand...

Would this also allow me to check the times between hops etc? (Using SNMP and MRTG)
 
carstensdj said:
Would this also allow me to check the times between hops etc? (Using SNMP and MRTG)
Click to expand...

No for that you could use something like tcptraceroute or if you wanted to go more fancy something like smokeping.
 
Firstly - how many people are using that 11Mbps connection, and for what?

I have a 6Mbps link, and about 5 of us use it every night without any problems, beyond Telkom's sucky gear, and that includes me gaming online in BF3.
 
FlatspinZA said:
Firstly - how many people are using that 11Mbps connection, and for what?

I have a 6Mbps link, and about 5 of us use it every night without any problems, beyond Telkom's sucky gear, and that includes me gaming online in BF3.
Click to expand...

Hi Flatspin. The wireless is only used as a means to bring back CCTV footage from sites, back into our control room where they are monitored live. Internet and Email is run on a separate ADSL line...
 
carstensdj said:
I'll google these and take a look. Thanks morkhans
Click to expand...

I'd say you still want to be generating your own traffic graphs in addition to checking latency on the hops. If the latency is through the roof then the next thing you want to check is if the link is saturated. If it is that explains the latency. If it's not then there is a problem upstream. The other thing you can look at is netflow which will give you some traffic accounting. ManageEngine netflow has a management tool which will take info from a number of collectors. Depending on your network setup you may have to stick something between your router and the LAN so the netflow collector can gather the data.
 
carstensdj said:
Hi Flatspin. The wireless is only used as a means to bring back CCTV footage from sites, back into our control room where they are monitored live. Internet and Email is run on a separate ADSL line...
Click to expand...

There's your problem, as far as I can tell - how many cameras, and at what resolutions are you streaming the data?

I installed 32 cameras in Nigeria and the bandwidth was 70% of my Gigabit cable, for roughly half of those cameras.

It sounds to me like you need an independent solution, rather than being charged by an ISP for bandwidth.
 
Do you have access to the router? If it's a Routerboard you can setup/view graphs from the web interface.
 
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