RRDtool is a generic multi-purpose replacement to the graphing portions of
MRTG, both written by Tobi Oetiker. People were doing so much hackery on
MRTG that he released RRDtool to meet the demand.

There's a couple ways to do what you're after:

For short term/daily traffic eyeballing, a couple of tools that will help
you assess what you're doing, on the fly.

Ethernet Traffic Monitor -
http://freshmeat.net/projects/traffic/?topic_id=150
Ethernet Traffic Monitor is a little Perl program which reads and parses
files found in /proc/net and shows ethernet (whether LAN or other
Internet connection) transfers.

Trafshow -
Available as a standard RPM
Trafshow will display real-time traffic information, including hosts and
traffic rates for each.

For long term/weekly/monthly traffic, a cricket implementation to watch
the /proc ethernet counters would do superbly.

As suggested, though, make them cough up traffic stats. YOU are the
customer, and don't let them screw you. If you get into a huge bitter
argument with them, give me a shout. Network management is my field of
specialization, and I'd be happy to consult, cheap.

- billn


On 10 Apr 2002, Dallas Helquist wrote:

> I would first ask them to send you proof, then go through the effort of
> determining what you are actually using.
>
> That said - I know there are a few hacks out there for
> cricket(www.cricket.org) to do what you ask on a monthly basis - I am
> sure they could be modified to show it on a daily basis.
>
> Also - does MRTG use .rrd files like cricket does?  If so, a simple
> script to do a rrdtool -fetch and calculate total bits would be easy.
>
> -dallas
>
> On Wed, 2002-04-10 at 20:03, Lonnie Clardy wrote:
> > Do any of you know of a tool that allows you to get a graph of total
> > through put for an interface? Maybe if I tell you why. it will make more
> > sense, my provider has explained to me that they only expect to see 150
> > megabytes of upstream traffic from my machine to the Internet per day
> > and I have received a letter telling me that I am exceeding that amount
> > regularly. I would like to just have a graph or something showing the
> > total amount of traffic that I actually send on a daily basis.
> >
> > I am running RedHat 7.2 and already use MRTG to get some information.
> >
> > Any ideas?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Lonnie
> >
> >
> >
> > Lonnie Clardy
> > Alpha Omega Consulting
> > http://www.alphaomegaconsulting.com
> > <http://www.alphaomegaconsulting.com/>
> > Phone - 480-855-7474
> > Fax - 775-249-9407
> >
> >
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