andrew wrote:
> On 2008-09-22, Frank Bell wrote:
>
>> Unfortunately, I'm a Comcast customer.
>>
>> http://www.comcast.net/terms/network/amendment/
>
> A bandwidth allowance of 250 gig per month seems fairly generous. My own
> data allowance for example is 12 gig per month. You do a lot of
> downloading?

At least they're *finally* advertising what "unlimited" really means.

But 250GB/month = 800kbps; that's 14x the old 56k modem, but its not
exactly stellar.

As to the original question, the kernel's iptables should provide
sufficient data. Its cross-platform, so any tutorial should do.
Here's the top hit for "iptables bandwidth monitoring".
http://www.linux.com/articles/50649

For instantaneous bandwidth, try ksysguard or one of the many packages
which wraps iptables.

- Daniel

On Sun, 21 Sep 2008 23:19:13 -0400, D Herring wrote:

>andrew wrote:
>> On 2008-09-22, Frank Bell wrote:
>>
>>> Unfortunately, I'm a Comcast customer.
>>>
>>> http://www.comcast.net/terms/network/amendment/
>>
>> A bandwidth allowance of 250 gig per month seems fairly generous. My own
>> data allowance for example is 12 gig per month. You do a lot of
>> downloading?
>
>At least they're *finally* advertising what "unlimited" really means.
>
>But 250GB/month = 800kbps; that's 14x the old 56k modem, but its not
>exactly stellar.
>
>As to the original question, the kernel's iptables should provide
>sufficient data. Its cross-platform, so any tutorial should do.
>Here's the top hit for "iptables bandwidth monitoring".
>http://www.linux.com/articles/50649
>
>For instantaneous bandwidth, try ksysguard or one of the many packages
>which wraps iptables.

Or build your own, I did here: http://bugsplatter.id.au/netdraw/

Source is there too, looks at the network interface rather than
iptables.

Grant.
--
http://bugsplatter.id.au/

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D Herring wrote:

> But 250GB/month = 800kbps; that's 14x the old 56k modem, but its not
> exactly stellar.

Yeah that's if you take the max bandwidth and divide by 24/7 online. That's
not logical. People don't use their bandwidth at a constant rate all day.
Cable modems go faster than 800kbps typically, and indeed people often buy
a line faster than this. It's not the speed they're capping: it's total
bandwidth used. You're free to download stuff faster than that, and indeed
you can, just the total amount can't go above 250GB without some fine or
penalty.

As for most residental users, with their use for the internet, I don't think
the best fix (especially in terms of setting it up, etc) is putting a
restriction on their machines. I think it's using common sense and making
slight changes to their internet use practices.

The typical person I talk to about this decision who thinks it's bad, when
you get into how they use it, they're also downloading lots of stuff
illegally on P2P. I don't blame ComCast at all. 250GB is very generous,
especially if you read the link: the average user is only using 2-3 GB /
month.


>
> As to the original question, the kernel's iptables should provide
> sufficient data. Its cross-platform, so any tutorial should do.
> Here's the top hit for "iptables bandwidth monitoring".
> http://www.linux.com/articles/50649
>
> For instantaneous bandwidth, try ksysguard or one of the many packages
> which wraps iptables.
>
> - Daniel

- --
Robert Delahunt

Ezekiel 11:19 New King James Version
Then I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within them,
and take the stony heart out of their flesh, and give them a heart of
flesh....
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On Sun, 21 Sep 2008 21:15:19 -0400, andrew
wrote:

> A bandwidth allowance of 250 gig per month seems fairly generous. My own
> data allowance for example is 12 gig per month. You do a lot of
> downloading?

I have a 20-year old and a webserver, a giganews account, and seven
computers on my network--no peer-to-peer or netflix or anything like that.

I just want to get a feel for usage.

Robert Delahunt wrote:
> D Herring wrote:
>
>> But 250GB/month = 800kbps; that's 14x the old 56k modem, but its not
>> exactly stellar.
>
> Yeah that's if you take the max bandwidth and divide by 24/7 online. That's
> not logical. People don't use their bandwidth at a constant rate all day.
> Cable modems go faster than 800kbps typically, and indeed people often buy
> a line faster than this. It's not the speed they're capping: it's total
> bandwidth used. You're free to download stuff faster than that, and indeed
> you can, just the total amount can't go above 250GB without some fine or
> penalty.

Absolutely true. But AOL was selling 24/7 dialup 15 years ago.
"Moore's law" is what, 2x in 2 years? So we should see a 128x gain.

The other point is this: "most users" sip their 2-3GB during peak
hours; these bandwidth hogs don't. Networks are stressed during the
peak hours; off-peak traffic doesn't really affect the average user,
but Comcast doesn't care.

Ah well... I think I've broke 50GB/month a couple times so this is a
mostly academic issue for me.


> The typical person I talk to about this decision who thinks it's bad, when
> you get into how they use it, they're also downloading lots of stuff
> illegally on P2P. I don't blame ComCast at all. 250GB is very generous,
> especially if you read the link: the average user is only using 2-3 GB /
> month.

$30+/month for 3GB is a ripoff. Poor fools.

Does nobody remember the "dark fiber" stories from years ago? I'm not
convinced the major ISPs are trying very hard to help their customers.

- Daniel

Frank Bell wrote:
> On Sun, 21 Sep 2008 21:15:19 -0400, andrew
> wrote:
>
> > A bandwidth allowance of 250 gig per month seems fairly generous. My own
> > data allowance for example is 12 gig per month. You do a lot of
> > downloading?
>
> I have a 20-year old and a webserver, a giganews account, and seven
> computers on my network--no peer-to-peer or netflix or anything like that.
>
> I just want to get a feel for usage.

ntop is a perfect solution for these small networks

http://www.ntop.org/
http://www.ntop.org/overview.html

depends on rrdtools and mrtg, ntop can provide detailed statistics of your
usage for hosts and service bandwith

http://oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/
http://oss.oetiker.ch/mrtg/


cu Frank

--
"By then he'd already learned some social skills and knew that one just
doesn't admit to liking computer games after the age of 12. So when he was
playin Doom, he used to explain that he was debugging and stress testing
memory management and the X server." (Lars Wirzenius über Linus Torvalds)

On 2008-09-25, Robert Delahunt wrote:

> I may be lucky in South Korea to get 2GB for $30, so you should be
> thankful.

Exactly! My scheme in Australia 12 gig for $39 per month and a 512 / 128
adsl scheme. But Australia has always had ripoff pricing.

Andrew

--
Do you think that's air you're breathing now?

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Hash: SHA1

Doesn't matter what Moore's law is. Moore could not predict the future.

I may be lucky in South Korea to get 2GB for $30, so you should be thankful.

D Herring wrote:

> Absolutely true. But AOL was selling 24/7 dialup 15 years ago.
> "Moore's law" is what, 2x in 2 years? So we should see a 128x gain.
>
> The other point is this: "most users" sip their 2-3GB during peak
> hours; these bandwidth hogs don't. Networks are stressed during the
> peak hours; off-peak traffic doesn't really affect the average user,
> but Comcast doesn't care.
>
> Ah well... I think I've broke 50GB/month a couple times so this is a
> mostly academic issue for me.
>
> $30+/month for 3GB is a ripoff. Poor fools.
>
> Does nobody remember the "dark fiber" stories from years ago? I'm not
> convinced the major ISPs are trying very hard to help their customers.
>
> - Daniel

- --
Robert Delahunt

Ezekiel 11:19 New King James Version
Then I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within them,
and take the stony heart out of their flesh, and give them a heart of
flesh....
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=+TKm
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

On Thu, 25 Sep 2008 10:52:11 +1000, andrew wrote:

>On 2008-09-25, Robert Delahunt wrote:
>
>> I may be lucky in South Korea to get 2GB for $30, so you should be
>> thankful.
>
>Exactly! My scheme in Australia 12 gig for $39 per month and a 512 / 128
>adsl scheme. But Australia has always had ripoff pricing.

Got dodo 512/128 'unlimited' --> au$50/month, limit is now documented as
60GB/month and they kick over-users out, according to whirlpool forum
comments.

I wrote my own bandwidth monitor to a) follow dodo counting rule (1k =
1000) and to see by how much dodo inflate their user data rates (only a
few percent, probably encapsulation).

One possibility I've not yet tried is monitoring iptables numbers, I
think they're 64-bit -- the ifconfig (/proc/net/dev) numbers are 32-bit.

Grant.
--
http://bugsplatter.id.au/

On Wed, 24 Sep 2008 20:22:48 -0500, Robert Delahunt wrote:



Ahhh, the extremely rare quad-luser post. Not often seen, especially here
in AOLS. This kind of exhibit is usually only seen in a.o.l.ubuntu or
something like 24hoursupport.helpdesk...

1. Top posting
2. PGP sig on Usenet
3. Bible-thumper quotation in sig
4. Borked sig delimiter

Only things which could be added would be to have posted it in HTML, from
Windoze!

Pathetic.


--
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me".
The Usenet Improvement Project: http://improve-usenet.org