[Nottingham] Network load graphing

[Graeme Fowler]

On Thu 04 Aug 2005 11:23:37 BST , Martin <martin at ml1.co.uk> wrote:
> What is the preferred utility for monitoring, recording and graphing 
> network load? (And packet errors?)

Preferred? That's personal choice :)

The de facto network "load" monitor is MRTG:
http://www.mrtg.org/

The more flexible, more powerful and therefore slightly less easy to 
use big sister of MRTG is RRDTool:
http://www.rrdtool.org/

If you want something which gives you a nice, usable interface to 
RRDTool, try cacti:
http://www.cacti.net/

If you're after a full-on, Open Source NMS platform, try OpenNMS:
http://www.opennms.org/


You can actually do a lot with all of them. MRTG is probably the most 
widely-deployed "network load grapher" on earth; RRDTool is really a 
data storage and manipulation system which has the bonus of graphing 
capability; cacti is a "full service" web front end to RRDTool written 
in PHP; OpenNMS is a humungous Java application which is an 
enterprise-level, rapidly developing, Open Source network management 
system which combines node/service monitoring with hundreds of other 
things you'd find in apps like HPOV, BMC Patrol, yadda yadda.


If I were you I'd make a start with Cacti and see if you can make it do 
what you want.

If you have prior knowledge of SNMP and you know the OIDs you want to 
graph on devices, or you know how to collect other data, you could 
always use MRTG and/or write yourself a frontend to RRDTool (which 
comes with a handy Perl module).

The world, at this point, is your oyster :)

Graeme