[CentOS] NIC traffic monitoring, recording and reporting software?

Wed Jul 15 16:53:00 UTC 2009
nate <centos at linuxpowered.net>

Les Mikesell wrote:

> There are several tools that will collect interface traffic data via
> SNMP and record it so you can graph, show high/low/average values over a
> time span, etc.  Cacti (in the epel repo) is probably the easiest to set
> up, OpenNMS (http://www.opennms.org) probably the most complete.  These
> could also get their data from a port on a managed switch or router if
> that makes it easier to show the connections you need to split out.

One thing to note for billing, often times bandwidth is billed on
a 95th percentile level, and cacti is not good for that if you want
accuracy.

We use RTG(in my research last year it seemed RTG was the most
frequently mentioned tool that was best for this purpose) to measure
our main pipes for billing comparison purposes, matches much closer
to what the ISPs say, and cacti is quite a bit off. I wouldn't rely
on RTG for normal network monitoring(UI isn't that good etc), but
for links where billing information is important at least for 95th
percentile, don't rely on cacti alone.

Note RTG is not the same as MRTG, though I think I recall seeing RTG
was inspired by MRTG.

Not sure how OpenNMS handles that sort of thing.

Not to knock cacti, I use it extensively, currently have a server
collecting more than 20 million points of data a day.

nate