How to use mrtg tomonitor traffic on your

wireless and wired network

a bella mia company

A Little BackgroundA Little Background

Josh EastonCTO at Bella Mia, Inc.Been an ISP for 8 yearsIn our 4th year as a WISPPart-15 WISP of the Year WISPCON IIIPart-15 MemberRegular Speaker at WISPCON.Located in South East Wisconsin

How do you know what your customers are doing?

Why should I monitor Why should I monitor traffic?traffic?

To determine how much of your network capacity is left

Collect statistics on what your average customer needs for bandwidth

Allows you to tell customers when they should buy more bandwidth from you

Helps when diagnosing problems

How does mrtg workHow does mrtg work

Collects data via SNMPRecord`s an interface`s traffic

counters every 5 minutesPlaces data in a fixed-size logCreates graphs, updates web

page

What is SNMP?What is SNMP?

Simple Network Management Protocol

UDP based, port 161Community name functions as a

passwordMany implementations allow access

control via IP address

What do I need to run What do I need to run mrtgmrtg

Under Windows NT/2000:Mrtg itselfActivePerlFireDaemon

Under Unix:Mrtg package or source codePerl, standard on almost all systems

What else do I need?What else do I need?

Devices that support snmpA web server to host the page

generated by mrtg

How to set it upHow to set it upSet up devices you want to monitor

Configure community names, allow machine running mrtg to monitor it

Install mrtg and support softwareCreate a configuration

By hand with a text editorUsing cfgmaker scriptOr a combination of both

Test out configurationSetup automated process to run mrtg

periodicallyCreate a cron job or background process

Now for some examplesNow for some examples

Questions?Questions?Presentation presented and created by

Josh Easton

a bella mia company

Thank you for your attention!A PPT copy of the presentation can also be found online at:http://wispconv.mia.net/ppt/mrtg.ppt