Re: [Astlinux-users] Metering all traffic

[Lonnie A. <li...@lo...>]

> On Jan 26, 2021, at 8:29 AM, Michael Keuter <li...@mk...> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>> Am 26.01.2021 um 15:08 schrieb David Kerr <da...@ke...>:
>> 
>> As some of you may be aware, Comcast / Xfinity are starting to impose
>> monthly data caps on internet usage.  Where I live it is 1.2TB a
>> month.  So I just received the dreaded "You have used 75% of your
>> allowance" email.  Fortunately only 5 days from the end of the month,
>> but looking back there are months that I have exceeded the cap.
>> 
>> Can I do anything in Astlinux to meter usage myself?  I would want to
>> monitor raw traffic in and out on eth0, the totals would need to
>> survive reboot, I would want to reset on the first of each month and
>> maintain a history.  For extra credit... be able to identify high
>> users on my internal network(s).
>> 
>> Any ideas?  Have any other gateways (like OpenWRT) tackled this?
>> 
>> Thanks
>> David
> 
> Hi David,
> 
> most applications that I know use RRDtool (a Round-Robin-database to store data/measurements) as its basis, like Munin, Cacti, MRTG etc.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RRDtool
> 
> It is also available in BR2.
> Years ago I had hacked myself a Munin node (client) for AstLinux, so data could fetched from a Munin server on Debian in my network from my AstLinux boxes. But it does not work anymore or I forgot about it. But it created nice progress graphicss for some parameters (CPU load, traffic, Asterisk calls, etc.).
> 
> Now since we're using SSDs instead CF cards it would be nice to have such application.
> My 2 cts.  
> 
> Michael

If we are mostly interesting in network info:

ip -s link show dev eth0
--or--
ifconfig eth0

provides network interface usage.  On shutdown and/or regular cron this info would need to be saved to persistent storage along with the sample date.

Though corner cases when the eth0 link goes down or a PPPoE ppp0 interface comes and goes can make pure interface monitoring less accurate.

An AIF plugin could be added to do something similar, which would be required if forwarded LAN -> WAN traffic was to be recorded.  Though the matching WAN -> LAN traffic might be a little tricky.

Then the little matter of what the ISP says the data is vs. your actual data.

Lonnie