Hello,

we are about to start our first network in two weeks, and we originally planned to use http://www.billingo.com for our customers, to let them log into their dedicated portal space and see how they do use bandwidth of the line they pay for .... But Billingo seems to be closing their service (and hopefully will restart it different way ....) ...

I would like to ask you, guys, how do you aproach such problem? Do you allow your customers to watch network traffic?

The thing is, I am new with this kind of stuff, and I see plenty of various tools around and I have no clear idea of how to aproach the problem in the best way. And also - I do prefer something simple rather than something complex.

Note(s) :
- I will have one linux server sitting inside the network ...
- I can program. Not fluent with C, but fluent in scripting (REBOL)

So:

1) I can see some utils for download directly on MikroTik's page - syslog, Dude, etc. - could they be usefull to me for the task given?

2) I found many do use MRTG package, it seems to be capable reading snmp protocol, right? What does it use as a storage? Can I easily generate website for user to use such a stored data?

3)RRDTool + net-snmp - other alternative to MRTG? It seems it uses its own kind of storage format?

4) more complex tools like Cacti - probably an overhead for what I need?

Let's say I am interested i following levels od details

- User (let's not complicate it and let's assume 1 user = 1 IP) total download/upload per month - that is the beginning I would like to cover and likely it will be enough

- hypothetically - user, further division per protocol/queue counters, e.g. to watch p2p activities etc.

Thanks for any pointers,
Cheers,
-pekr-

Several options come to mind.

1. Hotspot - This has builtin capability to measure (and report) traffic stats. You can send accounting data to a radius server and use that data to grab traffic stats on the fly for a user.

2. PPPoE - Depending on the layout of the network, this may be somewhat more complex, but using the radius backend, this would provide you the same options as the hotspot.

3. Traffic Accounting - This one would require you to put together a script that grabs accounting data direct from the MT on a regular basis, then compile and sort the data. It would require that you choose some sort of storage backend (mysql or similar) to keep the records in. After you have the data, the rest is easy.

4. Simple queues - With the Simple queues, you can simply grab the data for traffic stats via SNMP for each IP address (queue).

Hope this helps.

Using queues (bandwidth limit) for users, allowing you to monitor traffic for each user.

You can use remote MRTG server, which collects data from Router, and create graps. (Configure WeB server for public access).

You may setup requested configuration with only MikroTik Router, use /tool graphing queue to monitor each user bandwdith (you may allow see only own bandwidth).

MRTG server/traffic accounting - I think that is exactly what Billingo service offered. It read out snmp protocol each 5 or so minutes and then generated it for users to visit via web interface.

As for simple queues, I just have to get into it. I printed bandwidth control chapter and I don't know what is relation of PCQ, HTB, SFQ etc. queing disciplines to queue types, how does it relate etc. ...

sergejs, what do you mean by using /tool graphing? Am I wrong thinking that we could provide some access to router directly for certain users using WinBox, and they would see only specific sections as their traffic per period of time?

thnx,
-pekr-

pekr,
We serve arround 150-200 concurent PPPoE connections, and arround 1000 users are in our database.
There is separate radius/mysql server used for authentication, and one separate server with RRD running.
Data for RRD for each online user is collected from the mikrotik every five minutes via SNMP, and every client has its own web page with .htaccess and graphs shown on it.
This suits our needs. I hope it will work OK for you also.

Several options come to mind.

1. Hotspot - This has builtin capability to measure (and report) traffic stats. You can send accounting data to a radius server and use that data to grab traffic stats on the fly for a user.

2. PPPoE - Depending on the layout of the network, this may be somewhat more complex, but using the radius backend, this would provide you the same options as the hotspot.

3. Traffic Accounting - This one would require you to put together a script that grabs accounting data direct from the MT on a regular basis, then compile and sort the data. It would require that you choose some sort of storage backend (mysql or similar) to keep the records in. After you have the data, the rest is easy.

4. Simple queues - With the Simple queues, you can simply grab the data for traffic stats via SNMP for each IP address (queue).

Hope this helps.

How I obtain the data of simply queue via SNMP? The MIB that I use is the default for MK, but I can`t access to this data, only the traffic of each PPPoE interface.
Sorry for my english, I am spanish spoken.

the usual approach is to use an IETF RADIUS based system, which is good for all types of authentication and accounting. e.g. freeradius is an open source project for many operating-systems and there are also lots of accounting tools for it. (we are using a SBR-RADIUS together with MS-SQL server for example)

a forum- or google-search should give you a lot of hints.

You can enable graphs on MT, Tools->Graph. When you configure it, you can see the traffic of each queue, interface, etc.