[ NNSquad ] Re: Visualizing your bandwidth...

[scott@gnuveau.net]

On Tue, 27 Nov 2007, Vint Cerf wrote:

> anything that helps users understand their bandwidth consumption
> profiles might be quite useful - it would also provide an interesting
> statistical summary of usage patterns if the users of such a service
> were willing to allow their data to be aggregated.

on a smaller scale, I find nload (1) to be a very handy tool for
monitoring bandwidth usase in realtime.  one could probably build this
for NAT's running OpenWRT (2).

Enjoy,
Scott


(1)	http://sourceforge.net/projects/nload/
	http://packages.debian.org/etch/net/nload

(2)	http://openwrt.org/

>
> v
>
>
> On Nov 26, 2007, at 8:57 PM, Warren Kumari wrote:
>
> > 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
>