Sounds interesting, but I think what your client wants to accomplish can be done without writing anything. I'll read your requirements again more carefully and see what's up. nTop is pretty flexible, but would benefit from some written case studies, how to's, etc. I've been meaning to write some doc myself - especially pertaining to netflow - but haven't :(
G -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jimmy Sent: Thursday, July 03, 2008 1:33 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [Ntop] nTop Multiple Instance Manager & Persistent mySQL Data Logger (I accidentally sent this from an address that's not subscribed to this list, so I assume it was discarded - I apologize if it wasn't, and this is the second time you're receiving this.) Hello everyone - I'm new to this list, so I'm not sure if I'm posting this to the correct one. I wanted this information to reach non-developers, so I figured it would be appropriate to post it here. I'm in the process of writing a collection of PHP scripts designed to monitor various instances of nTop, perform hourly dumps of ntop's counters, and tie in seamlessly with a web front-end that uses Google's charts API to display some pretty charts and graphs of the data it has collected. All of the data is stored in mySQL tables. Here is a short list of features: *Monitor different instances of nTop (is the daemon running?) *Automatically restart, and/or e-mail someone about, nTop instances that go down unexpectedly. *Persistently store data about each interface and each host, on an hourly basis, and account for the counters being reset due to ntop being restarted. *The front-end displays most of the same data that the ntop embedded front-end displays, except for data that ntop doesn't dump (such as port distribution, per-host port usage, recent/active per-host sessions, etc.). (In the future, I will write some scripts that extract certain data from nTop's front-end, but that's a whole project in itself, so it's pretty much dead last on my list.) Those are the main features - but the project is not complete, and I am sure I will add more functionality before I begin using it regularly, and before it is released publicly. I decided to write these scripts because I was asked to perform some traffic and bandwidth utilization analysis for a mid-size company. nTop is great software, but I needed to be able to permanently store its data in a commonly used format, and most importantly, manage multiple instances. My client has multiple sites spread across NYC, all of the traffic goes to the central office, and and to their T3. They want statistics for each site, individually. This script suite is designed for this exact purpose - to manage multiple instances of nTop, permanently store the data that it accumulates, and do this for a week or two week long study. There will be such a large amount of data accumulated throughout this study, that it was simply not reasonable to have nTop dump its data to RRD tables, then manually graph different data. This means I'd have to write a front-end that pulled data from the RRD tables and displayed them, meaning it'd be easier, quicker, and more space-friendly for me to have nTop dump the data, and have my scripts pick and choose what to store permanently. I just wanted to give everyone a heads up, in case you might find this at all useful. When this project is complete, and I start using these scripts for the actual study, I will release what I have, hopefully along with some decent documentation. Feel free to e-mail me with any questions. If anyone knows of an appropriate location, associated with nTop, for me to post these scripts, I'd be happy to do so. Thanks, and have a great day! -Jimmy Ryan _______________________________________________ Ntop mailing list [email protected] http://listgateway.unipi.it/mailman/listinfo/ntop <font size="1"> <div style='border:none;border-bottom:double windowtext 2.25pt;padding:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in'> </div> "This email is intended to be reviewed by only the intended recipient and may contain information that is privileged and/or confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any review, use, dissemination, disclosure or copying of this email and its attachments, if any, is strictly prohibited. If you have received this email in error, please immediately notify the sender by return email and delete this email from your system." </font> _______________________________________________ Ntop mailing list [email protected] http://listgateway.unipi.it/mailman/listinfo/ntop
