Nope. I'm right and you're wrong. Naaaaa Naaaaa.... :-) Actually, it depends on your network.
If the network is stable, that is machines don't come and go frequently, then an IP address is a stable identifier and is substantially equal to a machine (PC) and thus to a user. >From his question, I was expecting a network with a limited pool of DHCP addresses, where a large population of individuals come in, join the network and receive an address, do stuff for a period of minutes, hours, days and then leave. Some number of days later (depends on the lease time), another user touches down and gets assigned the same IP. So 192.168.1.12 is You on Monday/Tuesday and Me on Friday. Because ntop uses ip for the rrd's it will commingle our workload. In this situation, the MAC address is a better stable identifier. It would certainly be feasible to re-write rrdPlugin.c to use the MAC address not the IP address for local hosts (or maybe do both), but it doesn't do that today. As a work-around, extending the DCHP lease time means that there would be much less reuse - maybe you want a time that is at least 110% of the interarrival time of your frequent users. That way, the people who show up periodically get the same address each time, while the transients and one-timers use the rest. It wouldn't be perfect, but it would work... -----Burton -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of The Jetman Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2003 2:28 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Ntop] Bandwidth logging per IP... ntop the way to go? ----- Original Message ----- From: Burton M. Strauss III To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 2003 22:13 PM Subject: RE: [Ntop] Bandwidth logging per IP... ntop the way to go? 2.1.2 is unsupported, very old, buggy, well, you get the idea... read docs/FAQ - there's a good explanation in there of how ntop works. Look for "hybrid packet analyzer". Read up on the new switches, which will disable the dependence on the MAC address. If you're having problems with dhcp then you need to look at extending the lease times - there's no way to incorporate that type of external information into ntop. -----Burton ====================================================================== Burton: I think the answer to his question, is a qualified yes. I'm essentially doing what Ben is asking and I *believe* the MAC->IP issue is no longer a problem, since the RRDs are being stored on a host-by-host basis. I obviously defer to your better knowledge of the code, but I've been capturing stats nitely, on a host-by-host basis via the bytesRcvd and bytesSent.rrd files for three months and the numbers I've been recording look very reasonable. Later....Jet =============== From the desk of Jethro Wright, III ================ + Nothing causes self-delusion quite so readily as power. = === [EMAIL PROTECTED] ========================= Liu Binyan === ====================================================================== -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Ben Zampatti Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 2003 8:38 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Ntop] Bandwidth logging per IP... ntop the way to go? 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? _______________________________________________ Ntop mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://listgateway.unipi.it/mailman/listinfo/ntop _______________________________________________ Ntop mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://listgateway.unipi.it/mailman/listinfo/ntop
