[OFB Cafe] Monitoring network traffic

[Fred Smith]

Any Linux system keeps a traffic log on a per interface basis.  On 32
bit systems, these counters roll over at 2 GiB, but on 64 bit systems
can go pretty high:

          RX packets:16070432954 errors:32 dropped:2158 overruns:0 frame:32
          TX packets:20705025673 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:8678293391038 (7.8 TiB)  TX bytes:23354712671929 (21.2 TiB)

The downside of this counter is that it gets reset on reboot, and
can't practically be reset any other way (you have to unload the
interface driver module to do it), but I've seen people who toss that
count into a file every night at the same point and come away with
daily statistics by simply subtracting the previous night's count.

-Fred


On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 4:36 PM, Rick Bowers <rwbowers at gmail.com> wrote:
> Effective October 1, Comcast will be limiting customers to
> 250GB/month of data. They say they will "reprimand" a user after the
> first offence and cut them off for the second offense -- possibly for
> 6 - 9 months.
>
> Since I am a Comcast customer, and I work mostly from home, I would
> like to monitor my usage. Comcast says they have no tools.
>
> I'm pretty sure i don't use anywhere close to 250GB/month but I'd
> like to know for sure. I use Vonage for my phone and use 30 - 50
> hours per month. I'm often doing demos, or watching demos, using Live
> Meeting and other web-based services. I also need to transfer large
> files occasionally.
>
> I've done some Googling and have found a few applications that
> monitor network traffic. But they run on a single server.
>
> I have two Windows machines (a desktop and a laptop), a linux server
> for my mail/web/FTP and a couple of TiVos. I need something that,
> maybe, sits in front of everything.
>
> My web/mail/FTP server can also act as a fire wall. It's running SME
> Server (formerly e-smith) so perhaps I could run something on that.
>
> Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
>
> ~Rick
>
>
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