Bandwidth monitoring

 

Bandwidth is a one of the key factors in the networking and is a very important aspect of the Internet business. Important to keep track of your bandwidth usage...Bandwidth is a one of the key factors in the networking and is a very important aspect of the Internet business. Important to keep track of your bandwidth usage...

Why one need bandwidth monitoring?

Although you could rely on your ISP to track your bandwidth usage, but to be honest the more bandwidth one use the happier his ISP will be … In this case there is much room for billing surprises.

you will get:

  • effective bandwidth usage control solution;
  • to make your ISP bills more predictable;
  • allow your customers to monitor their bandwidth.
  • managable bandwidth graphs;
  • flooding issues prevention;
  • thorough monitoring of any side of your server/network performance.

So how is it possible to monitor the bandwith? There is a special software that helps you to keep track of your bandwith by building bandwidth graphs, like these:
click to view a full image
click to view a full image

Farpost Solutions on Bandwidth Monitoring

We developed a wide range of solutions for bandwidth monitoring to be configured on any type of the Windows or Unix-based OS.

Bandwidth usage graphs are basic elements of the bandwidth monitoring and are included in all our Packages. The graphs are displayed as HTML page showing incoming and outgoing bandwidth usage as a real-time and historical views of your hour/daily/monthly/yearly statistics. Any graph can be customized to show the other metrics as well (total bandwidth, 95th percentile, system load and etc.)

Index pages allow you to plot multiple graphs on one page and create an organized structure of pages. It is useful when you need to monitor multiple sources and compare statistics.

Summary diagrams represent bandwidth usage statistics as a common diagram view. Summary diagrams display statistics of incoming and outgoing bandwidth usage as well as any other metrics (total bandwidth, ratio, etc.)

Web frontend - a fully customizable interface for featured monitoring tasks. Farpost tech support undertake the initial configuration for any given server/network and after that one could easily add any source for monitoring with the friendly interface of this web front end based on CACTI software. Along with being able to manage/organize a large number of graphs, maintain data sources, and round robin archives in a database, this software also handles the data gathering.

Get bandwidth monitoring software from Farpsot in three easy steps... choose from a number of monitoring packages starting from $50

 

More about bandwidth monitoring

Need more details on bandwidth monitoring? You can ask a question using our online form or check bandwidth monitoring FAQ section to see if your question is already listed.

 

Bandwidth Monitoring FAQ
  1. What is Bandwidth?
  2. What are kbs, mbs, gbs?
  3. How does bandwidth monitoring work?
  4. How does an ISP measure my bandwidth?
  5. What about 95th percentile rule? How does an ISP count it?
  6. Can I see some examples?
  7. What is the cost of your services? What payment options do you offer?
  8. What are the software needs? Is my networking equipment supported?
  9. What software do you use?
  10. Ok, I like what I see. What do I have to do to get the software on my server?
  11. Good, but what if my network link goes down?
  12. I didn't find an answer to my question.

1. What is Bandwidth?
Bandwidth is a synonym for data transfer rate - the amount of data that can be carried from one point to another in a given time period.

2. What are kbs, mbs, gbs?
These are the units used to measure bandwidth and that show how much data are carried over the link in a second.
1000kbs = 1mbs - one Mbit of data in a second
1000mbs = 1gbs - one Gbit of data in a second

3. How does bandwidth monitoring work?
Many routers (and other equipment) are equipped with counters. With a special network protocol you can read such a counter, wait for five minutes, and then read the counter again. In normal circumstances the counter will increase by a certain amount. Network bandwidth is usually measured per second. By dividing the five-minute increase by 300 (the number of seconds in five minutes) you'll know the bandwidth. The monitoring software calculates the rate and displays it as an image. Real time measurement provides a historic view of the rate changing over time.

4. How does an ISP measure my bandwidth?
All ISPs do it in the same way - they pull data from network devices counters every 5 minutes. Farpost uses the same method and the graphs we provide are very similar to what an ISP would use to monitor your traffic.

5. What about 95th percentile rule? How does an ISP count it?
The '95th percentile' rule considers your mean bandwidth utilization ignoring high peaks. See an explanation. We include '95 percentile' in all our Monitoring Packages, so your bandwidth will be measured the same way as any typical ISP does.

6. Can I see some examples?
Sure. Please, check our examples page.

7. What is the cost of your services? What payment options do you offer?
Please check our Monitoring Packages page for pricing. Pay Pal and other payment options are available. We will bill you only after you have received a service and satisfy with it.

8. What are the software needs? Is my networking equipment supported?
Bandwidth monitoring software can be installed on any Windows or UNIX server. It includes support for most networking equipment from such vendors as 3Com, Cisco, D-Link, Extreme, Foundry, Hewlett Packard, Linksys, Netscreen, Netgear, Riverstone, and Sonic Wall as well as many others.

9. What software do you use?
We prefer MRTG with some additional utilities and patches/features, Cacti, Cricket, and some others.

10. Ok, I like what I see. What do I have to do to get the software on my server?
It takes Farpost technical specialists a couple of hours to setup and configure bandwidth monitoring software on your Windows or UNIX server and you could start using it right away.

11. Good, but what if my network link goes down?
Bandwidth monitoring software just traces bandwidth utilization over time but it doesn't alert you if your link is down. If you want to keep an eye on your network links or servers, please check our 24/7 Monitoring and Tech Support services.

12. I didn't find an answer to my question.
Feel free to contact us at any time. We work 24x7x365.

 

Bandwidth monitoring software

As it was said already there are many different bandwidth monitoring tools available. And although there are many featured commercial software are offered given today’s market, we give our preference to these open source tools that would easily compete with many brand name commercial products.

MRTG (Multi Router Traffic Grapher) is a tool to monitor the bandwidth on network-links. MRTG generates HTML pages containing graphical images which provide a LIVE visual representation of bandwidth usage. MRTG is easily configured for Windows or Linux.

RRD is a system to store and display time-series data (i.e. network bandwidth, machine-room temperature, server load average). It stores the data in a very compact way that will not expand over time, and it presents useful graphs by processing the data to enforce a certain data density. It can be used either via simple wrapper scripts (from shell or Perl) or via web frontends that poll network devices and put a friendly user interface on it.

Cacti is a complete web frontend to use with RRDTool. It stores all the necessary information to create graphs and populate them with data in a MySQL database. This web frontend is completely PHP driven. Along with being able to maintain Graphs, Data Sources, and Round Robin Archives in a database, CACTI handles the data gathering. There is also SNMP support for those used to creating traffic graphs with MRTG.

Nagios is an open source host and network monitoring program. It is one of the most used applications for network administrators to be completely aware of the network status.

 

Technical information

In more details bandwidth could be defined as amount of information (bits) that can be transmitted along a channel (through network equipment) in a second. In this way it’s measured in bits (megabits, gigabits) per second (bps, Mbs, Gbs). There are lots of different tools for measuring network bandwidth and most of them use the same algorithm and their work can be explained rather simple. Many routers (and other equipment) have counters in them. Monitoring software reads such a counter, waits for five minutes, then reads the counter again. Normally the counter will have increased by a certain amount. This increase happened during five minutes and you therefore know the amount of traffic that was sent through this device during that five minutes. Network traffic is usually measured per second. If the number calculated is divided by 300 (the amount of seconds in five minutes), you know the amount of bytes per second. The software calculates such a rate and displays it in an image. When this process is repeated you'll end up with an image showing the rate changing over time.
Bandwidth monitoring software can be installed on Unix or Windows-based server and configured to collect stats from your network equipment periodically.

 Get bandwidth monitoring software from Farpsot in three easy steps... choose from a number of monitoring packages starting from $50