Well, after the old Dynalink RTA1025W ADSL modem died and I took the opportunity to remediate several network devices in the process I lost the ability to measure network traffic. Most notably, I could no longer measure the amount of data being uploaded and downloaded over the ADSL connection via the new Billion 7800 DXL router modem.. I had relied upon the Tomato firmware on an aging WRT54G router to look after that function. Whilst this isn’t necessarily a big deal as we have an unlimited plan with TPG I would still like to keep track of things nonetheless.
Anyway, I am giving a tool called PRTG a try which allows you to monitor all sorts of stuff on the network including traffic flowing in and out of your main router, network devices such as printers and client devices such as regular computers. This can be handy if you need to keep an eye on disk space across a number of computers or if printers are incurring a higher than expected duty load (more important in a corporate environment).
I am running the thirty day trial at present which allows an unlimited number of sensors (each sensor measures a single metric on a single device) after which you can use it for free with ten sensors. This should be fine for my needs as I am most interested in the router.
Anyway, I will let you know how I get on 🙂
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