Ask Slashdot: How To Monitor Your Own Bandwidth Usage? 319
Vrtigo1 writes "With many ISPs either already using bandwidth caps or talking about them, I was wondering how other Slashdot readers are keeping tabs on how much data is being transferred through their home Internet connections. None of the consumer routers I've used seem to make this information easily accessible. I'd like some way to see exactly how much data has been sent and received by the WAN port facing my ISP's modem so I can compare the numbers I get with the numbers they give me. I don't want to pay for their modem firmware updates and other network management traffic, so I'd like to see how the two numbers line up."
Use rfc1149 as an aide (Score:3, Funny)
I put a pair of RFC1149-to-Ethernet gateways between my border router and my cable modem.
I then estimate the number of packets by measuring the amount of poultry poop between the gateway devices.
I multiply this by an estimated average packet size and I have a pretty good estimate of the number of bytes transferred plus the number of bytes lost.
Unfortunately I'm still trying to figure out my packet-loss ratio. Once I've got that down I'll have a better handle on how much traffic is going in and out of the modem.