[colug-432] tracking WAN data usage

[Chris Anderson]

You could install the softflowd package (netflow exporter) and point it at a PC running a collector. There is a free version of ManageEngine’s Netflow Analyzer (netflow collector/reporting) that I’ve used with Cisco devices in the past. I am not sure how well it works with pfsense softflowd exports though.

 

https://www.manageengine.com/products/netflow/download-free.html

 

 

From: colug-432-bounces at colug.net [mailto:colug-432-bounces at colug.net] On Behalf Of Rick Hornsby
Sent: Saturday, October 8, 2016 3:15 PM
To: Central OH Linux User Group - 432xx <colug-432 at colug.net>
Subject: [colug-432] tracking WAN data usage

 

My ISP does not currently have a per month data limit, and does not provide us with any usage stats as such. However, with all the nonsense coming out of Comcast and AT&T (including the stories of being charged for grossly over-inflated data usage), it's got me curious about my own usage. What does my usage look like now, and if I found myself in a monopoly setting where there was only one residential ISP, and they had usage caps - how would I measure it for myself?

 

As has been pointed out in these over-charging stories, unlike your electric meter or your gas meter which is subject to the jurisdiction of a PUCO type government body, there's absolutely no accountability or transparency stopping Comcast from just making up a number - or being wrong and trying to charge you for something you didn't use anyway.

 

I have pfSense as my home router, and I have the ntop package running but I'm finding a couple of challenges with it -

 

* Any configuration changes to ntop reset all the statistics back to zero (There's an option for keeping historical data, but it seems clear from the UI that this should not be turned on.)

* While I definitely like some of the detail (which I don't understand yet), I'm having a hard time figuring out where the overall data used number might be

 

I have an extra pi, I was thinking of maybe having pfSense ship the stats to that. Is there a better tool than ntop? Even if the only stats I got were total data used, and maybe total (WAN?) data used by device - I think that might be good enough.

 

thanks!

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.colug.net/pipermail/colug-432/attachments/20161009/0bc32c93/attachment-0001.html