Viewing Graphs

Once you have configured the bandwidth manager system to gather statistics, it will save traffic statistics in the mySQL database. You can view graphs either from the main menu or by clicking the link in the Name field on the "View Rules" page. From the main menu, use the pull-down menu to select the interface for which you want to see a graph, and then press the Graphs button:

Note that the main menu page is automatically updated to include all of the interfaces configured for statistical gathering. Now that we've waited awhile, we should have some data for our eth0 interface graph. Select eth0 in the Graphs pulldown and click "View".

The graphs above show a "day graph", which is the stats for the current day. You can get a pretty good idea what time it is from where the graph data stops. A "Day Graph" is the default graph that you will see when you click a Name stats link. On the right side statistics for the period of the graph are shown as the Max and Avg volumes recorded for both traffic (bits per second) and volume (packets per second), as well as total bandwidth used for the period of the graph. Most people only think about bandwidth, or traffic, but the truth is that most routers are limited by packets per second before total thoughput. Many low end routers max out at 1500pps or so, so it's good to know the packet volume of your network as well as the bandwidth usage.

Viewing Historical Data

The ET/BWMGR allows you to view data from any period stored on your current disk. Simply enter the date of interest in the Enter Date: field and click the appropriate button to view your graph. Note that leaving the field blank defaults to "today".

We entered 6/12/03 into the date field and clicked on "Day Graph" to get the graph above. You can retrieve data for any period as long as there is data stored on your system.

Weekly and Monthy Graphs

Weekly and monthly graphs give you and your customers a relative view of traffic patterns over longer periods of time. Monthly reports can also be used for billing your customers as most billing cycles are monthly, and you can get the total monthy usage info from the graph output:

As you can see from the above, the customer AcmeCorp used 923+ GB of data in the month. Note that the Tot Usage is expressed in Bytes (MegaBytes or GigaBytes) rather that bits. Likewise, packets are shown as the total number of packets sent and received.