[Ntop] Bandwidth logging per IP... ntop the way to go?

[Ben Zampatti]

Hello, I am in need of some help. I have looked at a lot of programs out there and it seems that NTOP is the best way to go about this. What im after is a way to track bandwidth for each individual IP and something that can do reports every day or week.   I have used NTOP in the past (version 2.1.2) and use to use it log to a mysql database. This worked OK, except if someone uses an IP address and starts downloading stuff, NTOP would log it properly, however if they disconnect and then someone else with a different MAC address would connect to the network with the same IP as the previous person, then the stats would get deleted in the database and start from scratch. However, on the web interface, it would just show up a duplicate IP but still keep the other stats.   I know that the latest NTOP these days don’t support mysql but it does support RRDtool. I had a quick look at this before, and it may do the job – does it work with NTOP 2.1.2? or will I need to upgrade to the latest?   The main question is, if I use RRDtool to log the stats, will it keep the original stats of someone, if someone else comes on the network with a different computer/MAC address but same IP as previous person? If so, what will show up? I can use RRDtool to log to an sql database and then just make a script that runs every night that moves the stats to another table and keeps a total per day/week/month.   Does anyone know if this is the right way to do things? I have searched high and low for a solution to this but it’s hard to find something that actually logs IPs behing the server/gateway (running the IP logger) and logs their bandwidth while putting it in some kind of database to use for reporting.