Tracking high bandwidth users 1

[stompin]

G'day y'all...! I'm running a small LAN here with about 120 users and I need to be able to track high bandwidth users on the LAN, both internal traffic and also external traffic. Every now and then the 128K, yep 128K!!, KS gets satuated with traffic and I can't find the culprit. Therefore can anybody suggest a tool / method of tracking this sucka please??

Much appreciated.

 

[patrckb]

How about the low tech method of watching the lights on your switches? It's cheap, easy, and pretty reliable. If you have one or two heavy-hitters their lights will be more consistently on than others.

Assuming you have switches that speak SNMP, you could use MRTG (

http://www.mrtg.org)

and get the Top Talker script (

http://www.geocities.com/mrtg_daemon/toptalkers.html)

to sort the interfaces by amount of traffic.

MRTG could also help you quantify your bandwidth usage and that could help you justify a bandwidth increase.

HTH,
Patrick

Patrick Bartkus, CCNP, CNX, SCM, RHCE Sr. Network Engineer
GA Dept of Labor IT Network Services
If truth were not absolute, how could there be justice?

 

[stompin]

Yer was looking at the lights!! - but wanted a more precise measurement cus I am on a bandwidth increase tip here and I need to justify this, believe it or not!. I'll check out you web link and see if I can use - thanks for the advice.

later

 

[franklin97355]

Hybodus is a network monitoring program. Might be of use to you.

 

[bcastner]

The easiest, if your switches and routers are SNMP enabled, would be to use something like MRTG suggested earlier by Forum member Patrckb.

If using Windows clients, you could set performance monitor counters, and use the native tools to schedule the saving of perfmon counters in a readable log format, such as CSV.

Sweep through your LAN and collect the CSV files and analyze them in Access or Excell.

Google "xp save performance monitor data" and read the first six or so articles for examples.

 

[vipergg]

Don't know if you have manageable switches or not , but the next time it is happening log into the switch and clear counters and then see who is doing the heavy transmitting or recieving .