[kwlug-disc] Bandwidth monitoring for individual computers in a home network

[unsolicited]

Khalid Baheyeldin wrote, On 05/30/2010 10:53 PM:
> On Sun, May 30, 2010 at 9:55 PM, unsolicited <unsolicited at swiz.ca> wrote:
> 
>> Nice page.
>>
>> Couple of thoughts:
>>
>> - it can be tough to remember that data collection, data monitoring, and
>> data display, need not all be on the same device. So, it might not be
>> necessary to depend upon little ol' OpenWRT, with limited horsepower and
>> memory, to do it all. It may perhaps be useful to use OpenWRT as a point of
>> collection, and perhaps monitoring, and let another computer do the heavy
>> lifting. Assuming, for example, that you want to clamp down an ip overusing
>> the bandwidth, vs. an ip having reached it's limit for the month. (The
>> former is merely monitoring, the latter assumes data collection and
>> summation to make the 'drop the gate' decision.)
>>
> 
> fprobe, which I mention on the page, does exactly that. My thought was to
> run ntop on a regular server, and have only fprobe on the OpenWRT device.
> This way all the graph, HTML generation, and data analysis is on a more
> beefy machine.
> 
> 
>> - if I read your text correctly, for the Gargoyle to be effective it must
>> be your gateway. Many would be reluctant to do so (it it ain't broke ...)
>> Mind you, if you're considering OpenWRT anyway, as your gateway, you're
>> already there. Or if you already know your in the midst of a problem
>> anyways. OTOH - you can't control traffic that you're not in the midst of.
>>
> 
> Yes, this is a limitation, and I am willing to go with it when the time is
> right.

Granted. Where I was coming from is your page implies suitability for 
SMB's and/or larger - which is where my point may come into play.

> I would rather use the stock OpenWRT rather than a fork of it (Gargoyle).
> What I find intriguing is that the bwmon and qos packages are really written
> around iptables and not much else (just a simple bw_convert.c program).
> Which means that porting it to stock OpenWRT should be something that is
> easy to do (when I have time).

Note for future (mind you, you may already have run into this), a 
comment went flying by on IRC, for someone who was having a problem 
... to build against uclib (IIRC), not glibc.

> I wonder ... could you just vlan the kids off and rate limit them full time,
>> leaving the rest for you? I guess, depends upon the consequences when they
>> figure that out? (-:
>>
> 
> Yes, I can do that, but need a device that is able to do that (vlan and rate
> limit), so we are back to square one. Current router does not do that
> (though it is rock solid and never needs rebooting, something I can't say
> for my previous wired only router, and the DIR-615 that I got and returned).

What I meant was, most any OpenWRT installation should be able to do 
this. I'm assuming most anything OpenWRT can vlan (pretty sure), and 
that there is rate limiting in some package. vs the Gargoyle, 
specifically.

Mike picked up something at Best Buy (?) the other day for $10 (?), 
OpenWRT capable he thinks. Perhaps he'll chime in what he got.

To other's points, for the purpose you're talking of, you won't need 
GB - no ISP is that fast. You could put a new beast ahead of your 
current one, and maintain your internal speed. Remove the wan from the 
current one, and it's just a switch, after all.

And we keep seeing how having an OpenWRT box around enhances one's 
tool bag. [Mind you, I thought that about LinuxMCE too. And ultimately 
gave up on it.]

>> Khalid Baheyeldin wrote, On 05/30/2010 8:40 PM:
>>
>>> One of the reasons I was looking for a flashable Linux based router
>>> was to monitor bandwidth in a home network and trace the usage to
>>> individual computers.
>>>
>>> While I have not implemented any specific solution yet, mostly due
>>> to lack of time to tinker, I gathered some information here for my
>>> own reference in the future.
>>>
>>> The Gargoyle Router, which is a variant of OpenWRT, seems to be
>>> exactly what I need: bandwidth monitoring and quality of service
>>> (throttling). I looked at the code and it seems to be iptables
>>> based, so could be applicable to any Linux based router.
>>>
>>> So here are the relevant links
>>>
>>>
>>> http://baheyeldin.com/bandwidth/monitoring-bandwidth-usage-individual-computers-home-network.html
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>>
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