How do I log IP bandwidth use?

Pheline · 08-30-2005, 10:07 PM

Ok, an interesting question for all you guru's out there.
The situation is this:
My household is on cable internet. Optusnet in Australia.
We have the modem plugged into a Linux box which is acting as a router/firewall. An ex-housemate set it up for me, very nice of him. I believe it's runnig Debian, if that makes a difference.
The connection then goes to a switch and then out to the individual pc's. Each Pc has a permanent IP address set by the Linux box.
I've been noticing that we have been reaching our 20gb download cap halfway through the month, as a result we get capped down to 28.8.
Needless to say, very annoying.

What I want to do, is firstly to log the bandwidth usage of each IP address, preferably with upload and download being seperately logged. Secondly, a running total would be nice to have, though not necessary, I can add.

Is this a possibility? Or am I wanting too much out of Linux?
If possible, I'd want to have this running in the background.

Please help me!
-Pheline.

danimalz · 08-30-2005, 10:20 PM

the best thing, in my opinion, would be to install a proxy; perhaps squid. Read up on it.

Pheline · 08-30-2005, 11:03 PM

Yeah, I just checked out squid. It looks quite good, but a full proxy program seems a little overpowered for what I need.
I guess I could nut my way through installing and managing it, but I'd prefer a simpler app.

scowles · 08-31-2005, 04:51 AM

Take a look at installing "ntop". Leave it running in the background for a few days (or even a few hours). It will point out which system is hogging all the bandwidtch on your network.

TigerOC · 08-31-2005, 06:21 AM

A very good app is iptraf. If the box is Debian then just do apt-get intall iptraf. Run it by bringing up a console and doing iptraf. The top option iptraffic monitor (all interfaces) will record all activity from each box on the network.

4mix · 08-31-2005, 06:24 PM

ntop is easy to install,
apt-get update
apt-get install ntop
ntop -d
and has a very good browsing interface. It has graphics for each ip - download, upload, type of protocol used. I recomand it.
If your server is 192.168.9.1 then it is accesible at this address: http://192.168.9.1:3000

iptraf shows your instantaneous trafic - easy to install and use

ipfm it's not grafical, but shows the download/upload amount for each computer in a log file - relatively easy to install/use

mrtg it-s a graphical software, less appealing than ntop, but I couldn't install it.

Good luck!