Bandwidth Monitoring program

[Julian Elischer]

Josh Paetzel wrote:
> 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?

I'd say that adding a hub is quite possible..

> 
>