Network monitoring software

Matir · 07-13-2005, 05:33 PM

I've read of Nagios in many places, but haven't tried it myself. Is it overkill for smaller networks? How difficult is setup/use?

born4linux · 07-13-2005, 07:34 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Matir
I think that with SNMP the other machines have to be explicitly told to send SNMP broadcasts.

no. the machines are queried by the monitoring tool, if you only told it to. the SNMP service should be allowed connections from the querying machine to gather needed data.

born4linux · 07-13-2005, 08:01 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by mikedeatworld
i believe this still has to be done from a centralized machine which all traffic flows (i.e. server)

how do you think utilization and other data from routers (ie h/w like cisco) are obtained? most routers have their own embedded SNMP service that can be queried to get data like bandwidth utilization that you can use with mrtg or rrdtool. so you don't have to be the central machine just to monitor bandwidth usage.

Matir · 07-13-2005, 08:14 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by born4linux
how do you think utilization and other data from routers (ie h/w like cisco) are obtained? most routers have their own embedded SNMP service that can be queried to get data like bandwidth utilization that you can use with mrtg or rrdtool. so you don't have to be the central machine just to monitor bandwidth usage.

Fair enough, but I doubt most smaller routers (Linksys, D-Link, etc) support SNMP.

mikedeatworld · 07-14-2005, 12:04 PM

born4linux --

i was thinking from a home users perspective and overlooked SNMP as a solution.

ctkroeker · 07-16-2005, 06:54 PM

Well, except for my computer, they all run Win98 and win2k, so it would have to be a program that is available for both win/lin. The router we use is a D-link wireless broadband ethernet router.

born4linux · 07-17-2005, 09:06 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by ctkroeker
Well, except for my computer, they all run Win98 and win2k, so it would have to be a program that is available for both win/lin. The router we use is a D-link wireless broadband ethernet router.

if you really need to monitor bandwidth usage but your gateway has no facility for that, use rrdtool or mrtg via snmp. snmp is available in linux and windows. the SNMP service is available in win2k/winXP from the CD. and in win98SE (not sure for older version), snmp.exe is also available. and yes, MRTG can also be installed in MS Windows.