[ NNSquad ] Visualizing your bandwidth...

[Warren Kumari <warren@kumari.net>]

Hi,

So, I was thinking that it might be useful for consumers to be able to  
see how much bandwidth they are actually using -- sure there are many  
consumer applications that will monitor the bandwidth that the local  
machine is using, but monitoring the bandwidth that all of the  
machines behind your NAT is somewhat trickier for most users.

I was thinking of setting up a website where users can sign up (they  
will need to be willing to share their provider and general geographic  
location). The site will provide simple instructions for configuring  
(RO!) SNMP access for most of the consumer NAT devices (and each user  
will use a unique SNMP community). I will then start polling the  
device and generating MRTG type graphs for the user. The general  
location and provider information will also allow for the generation  
of aggregate / average information that can be publicly posted /  
shared (individual users graphs will only be available to them...).

Issues:
[1]: Dynamic addresses -- when the user first signs up it is easy  
enough to figure out their (external) address (assuming that they sign  
up form hom)e. If they do not have a static address, they will either  
need to use some sort of dynamic DNS system (DynDNS?) or run a client  
app that tells the poller when their IP has changed.

[2]: Allowing SNMP to their external interface -- AFAIK, many of the  
consumer NAT devices already allow SNMP polling (many with the  
community "public" (I just scanned my /24 and 14 devices answered an  
SNMP poll with 'public' as the community!))

[3]: Is this a stupid idea?


Anyway, thoughts?

W