MRTG Gurus- Today I asked my co-lo provider for a billing traffic count for the last 30 days to my one and only server in their location. The box acts as the mail/web server for my (small) WISP, and doesn't do a tremendous amount of traffic.
The co-lo sent me back a MRTG graph, which I've posted here: http://www.wildcatwireless.net/weekly.png The stats at the bottom read like this: Inbound: Current 3.49k Average 4.75k Maximum: 70.28k Outbout: Current 9.80k Average 28.67k Maximum: 2.19M This is the relevant explanation from the email: "Here is your weekly graph for the past 30 days. The billing is calculated from the total average in/out bandwidth (33kb/s in your case)." I thought that was a bit high, so I sent back this reply: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ uptime 16:09:02 up 53 days, 3:43, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.00 [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ /sbin/ifconfig eth0 eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0C:41:EB:0F:0D inet addr:63.77.16.216 Bcast:63.77.18.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::20c:41ff:feeb:f0d/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:33185855 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:6006941 errors:14890 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:29242 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:297514555 (283.7 Mb) TX bytes:2352406665 (2243.4 Mb) Interrupt:10 Base address:0xdc00 based on this uptime, the machine has been running for 4,592,580 seconds. During that period, total bytes in and out of the eth0 interface (the only active interface) has been 2649921220, or 21199369760 bits. so, bits/seconds is 4,616 bits/second over the last 53 days. According to your math, if I had done 33kb/s on averge for the last 30 days, my total usage would be 10,692k, or a little over 10GB of data transferred on and off the machine in the 30 day measurement window. Since my internal counters show 2.4GB transferred on and off the machine in 53 days, someones math ain't workin' out. His response was this: Those RX byte and TX byte counters are either not accurate or they roll over at least every week. As an example, we have a Linux server that has only 900MB RX and 2.6GB TX and has been up for over 28 days. However, this machine averages over 300GB of transfer a month according to our MRTG graphs. You're welcome to install MRTG on your server if you want to compare graphs with ours. Well, gee, I've ALREADY installed MRTG, and here is the link to MY version of these graphs: http://www.wildcatwireless.net/mrtg/www.wildcatwireless.net_2.html For those of you still interested, the values from MY weekly graph are: In 379.6 kb/s (3.8%) 8448.0 b/s (0.1%) 9536.0 b/s (0.1%) Out 144.0 kb/s (1.4%) 4160.0 b/s (0.0%) 2544.0 b/s (0.0%) And my Monthly graph: In 99.8 kb/s (1.0%) 7936.0 b/s (0.1%) 6880.0 b/s (0.1%) Out 70.7 kb/s (0.7%) 4584.0 b/s (0.0%) 3736.0 b/s (0.0%) So, here's my question: Is my co-lo provider's use of MRTG a valid way to calculate throughput for billing? If so, how did we get such different numbers from MRTG? For a bonus round, where should the TCP/IP counters "roll-over" on my uname -a: Linux www 2.6.11-10mdk #1 Mon May 30 11:58:13 CEST 2005 i686 Intel(R) Celeron(TM) CPU 1400MHz unknown GNU/Linux box? (BTW, for you security geeks, I know I've presented all kinds of private, internal, use-it-to-0wn-me data, but I have faith that ya'll will use this info for the forces of good.) Thanks in advance. John Gorkos -- Unsubscribe mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archive http://lists.ee.ethz.ch/mrtg FAQ http://faq.mrtg.org Homepage http://www.mrtg.org WebAdmin http://lists.ee.ethz.ch/lsg2.cgi
