How to use mrtg to

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MRTG

• How to use mrtg to
• monitor traffic on your
• wireless and wired network

a bella mia company
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A Little Background

• Josh Easton
• CTO at Bella Mia, Inc.
• Been an ISP for 8 years
• In our 4th year as a WISP
• Part-15 WISP of the Year WISPCON III
• Part-15 Member
• Regular Speaker at WISPCON.
• Located in South East Wisconsin

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How do you know what your customers are doing?
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Why should I monitor 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

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How does mrtg work

• Collects data via SNMP
• Records an interfaces traffic counters every 5
  minutes
• Places data in a fixed-size log
• Creates graphs, updates web page

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What is SNMP?

• Simple Network Management Protocol
• UDP based, port 161
• Community name functions as a password
• Many implementations allow access control via IP
  address

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What do I need to run mrtg

• Under Windows NT/2000
• Mrtg itself
• ActivePerl
• FireDaemon
• Under Unix
• Mrtg package or source code
• Perl, standard on almost all systems

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What else do I need?

• Devices that support snmp
• A web server to host the page generated by mrtg

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How to set it up

• Set up devices you want to monitor
• Configure community names, allow machine running
  mrtg to monitor it
• Install mrtg and support software
• Create a configuration
• By hand with a text editor
• Using cfgmaker script
• Or a combination of both
• Test out configuration
• Setup automated process to run mrtg periodically
• Create a cron job or background process

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Now for some examples
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Questions?
Presentation presented and created by Josh Easton
Thank you for your attention! A PPT copy of the
presentation can also be found online
at http//wispconv.mia.net/ppt/mrtg.ppt
a bella mia company