IPHost supports calculating traffic consumption and speed via SNMP. How do I set up these monitors?
Q: New version of IPHost Network Monitor offers traffic volume and speed measurement via SNMP. Could you provide step by step directions on setting up these?
A: You can find common monitor parameters descriptions on corresponding online help page. Below we will provide more detailed explanations of monitors settings, for both speed and volume.
SNMP Traffic Speed monitor:
Start New Monitor wizard and select Traffic category on the left and SNMP Traffic Speed monitor. Below is monitor parameters for this type of monitor:
You can change the interface name here. Press Select button and pop-up will appear offering list of known interfaces, like this:
Now enter monitor parameters, taking into account the following description.
Interface Bandwidth, measured in kbits/sec. This field is prefilled when monitor is being set up, however, you can change it to any positive integer value. Setting it to zero works as if it has been set to 1 (i.e., show speed in kbits/s).
Measure (traffic) means what type of traffic to take into account:
- traffic in both directions (Total Traffic)
- incoming traffic (Inbound Traffic)
- outgoing traffic (Outbound Traffic)
show it (traffic speed) as drop-down menu allows to display traffic as
- percentage of bandwidth
- in kbits/s
- in Mbits/s
Note: since interface bandwidth can be set to arbitrary value, percentage can be above 100.
The rest of traffic-specific parameters refer to SNMP version/authentication (if applicable). Note that we strongly recommend using either SNMP v2c, or SNMP v3, for better security. If SNMP v2c is used, community names should be set to non-default values, to prevent unauthorized access to data.
Note that Speed Limit State Condition do not inherit the limits from the monitor parent host. It means these limits have to be set separately.
SNMP Traffic Volume monitor:
Start New Monitor wizard and select SNMP Traffic Volume monitor. Below is properties section for this type of monitor:
Note that Interface Number, Interface Bandwidth and Measure (traffic) have the same meaning as in SNMP Traffic Speed monitor (see above).
show it (traffic volume) as allows to choose what units to display traffic counter in:
- kbytes
- Mbytes
- Gbytes
Store traffic data for allows to specify time interval used to collect traffic amount. You can change the interval via drop-down menu:
Note: changing the storage time interval can change the counter (and possibly trigger alerts, if set up). You can notice also that counter shows traffic within «sliding window», unrelated to any date/time during day.
If you need to collect monthly statistics of traffic usage, one of approaches is this: set storage time interval to 31 days, and reset counter (by changing data set to another value and back) as close to midnight of the first day of every month as possible.
Note: to clear monitor history you can select another data set (corresponding warning in pop-up window will be displayed), and set it back. The pop-up warning window looks like this:
Speed vs. Volume monitors
What is difference between the two monitors type?
Traffic Speed is about how quickly data are transferred. If, for example, you set up a stream multimedia server, it could be important to make sure that server exchange with other network devices is stable and fast enough.
Traffic Volume is about quantity. If you wish to limit amount of data your server transmits, say, within given timeframe, you should set up Traffic Volume monitor.
Related Topics:
How can we monitor T1 routers bandwidth consumption?
How to measure bandwidth consumption on Linux server?
