Bandwidth Monitoring program

[Josh Paetzel]

On Wednesday 06 December 2006 10:11, Julian Elischer wrote:
> Josh Paetzel wrote:
> > On Tuesday 05 December 2006 23:52, Brett Glass wrote:
> >> Add a few IPFW "count" rules to count the bytes and packets.
> >> Then, periodically harvest and reset the counters via a cron job
> >> and write the results to a file. You can then prepare tables and
> >> charts which are as simple or as fancy as you please, without
> >> resorting to SNMP (which isn't secure). A little bit of code in
> >> your favorite scripting language will do it. And of course you
> >> can output to a graphing package, though for me a simple
> >> histogram using asterisks has sufficient precision in most
> >> cases.
> >>
> >> --Brett Glass
> >
> > Just curious.....but where is he going to run ipfw?  I seriously
> > doubt his router can run it, and what good is it going to do him
> > to run it on a machine on the network if the network is switched?
> >  It's not going to be able to see any of the traffic other than
> > what that specific machine is sending/receiving.
>
> run ipfw in layer 2 after turning on promiscuous mode and attaching
> it to a hub.
>
> I do it all the time.
>

He specifically said in his original post that putting a machine 
between the router and his lan wasn't an option.  His question 
was,  "Is there a program where I can see whats going on from the
computer on that network?"  The answer to that question is, if he's on 
a switched network, no.  Not without a topology change.  If he can't 
put a box between the switch and router how likely is it that he's 
going to be able to put a hub between the switch and router and then 
attach a box to that?


-- 
Thanks,

Josh Paetzel