PRTG network monitor help

I'm trying to monitor my bandwidth. I downloaded the trial version of PRTG and installed, but am having trouble trying to figure out to use it properly. I just want to record my average available bandwidth over 3 seperate 24 hour periods. I am using a wireless router, and I think it sees that as a web server and may only measure speeds between my laptop and router. If that's the case, I can run it on my desktop and hardwire that in to the cable modem, but then I lose my laptop, but can live with that for a bit if it produces the results I want.

I'm sick and damn tired of Comcast and their economy internet service. I pay $27 a month for "upto" 1Mb, so that means I could be averaging 56K...which wouldn't surprise me to Comcast do that..

Any ideas?

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Comments

eMeS

I don't recall ever seeing PRTG discussed here, and so you're not likely to find much expertise on it in these parts.

I have a customer in the US who recently purchased PRTG, and had to go all the Germany to get a consultant that knew anything about configuring it properly.

MS

tiersten

I've never used PRTG but anyway...

Does your wireless router even have the ability to export statistics? PRTG wants something like SNMP on the router to extract these details and the average consumer router won't have it.

If your router doesn't support SNMP then your options are only WMI, NetFlow, sFlow and Packet Sniffing according to their site. NetFlow and sFlow are out of the window already as a router that doesn't do SNMP won't have either of those. You're left with WMI which only monitors the local interfaces on a PC and Packet Sniffing which will involve you connect your PC between your router and network.

I'm not sure what you're expecting to be able to record anyway. You'll only see what you're transferring. It won't show you maximum capacity of your connection unless you've got something that 24x7 is downloading and uploading as fast as possible.

Go investigate the manual on the PRTG site as to how to configure it as I've never used it and don't intend to use it. I agree with eMeS, I've not seen anybody say that they use PRTG on here so this forum probably isn't your best bet to get help.

genXrcist

Ricka182,

We use a 500 node license of PRTG Network Monitor so I can talk about this program but tiersten is right, this isn't going to work for you. The only way to get the information you're looking for would be if your ISP has default Public SNMP settings on their gateway for your neighborhood subnet. If it does you would then need to perform a manual discovery on the gateways IP because the bandwidth average you're trying to capture is between your Modem and their gateway, not your laptop and your wireless router.

If you're unhappy with the rate your getting from a Cable ISP then get DSL. Even if it's slower at least it's dedicated which in the end, would almost certainly be faster than the 56K you're reporting.

darkerosxx

Ricka, what model modem/router are you using?

tiersten

genXrcist wrote: »

If you're unhappy with the rate your getting from a Cable ISP then get DSL. Even if it's slower at least it's dedicated which in the end, would almost certainly be faster than the 56K you're reporting.

Its not quite dedicated as you'll have contention from the DSLAM/MSAN back to the ISPs core network unless you pay lots of $$$$ to get a dedicated or uncontended VP. You won't get greedy people messing with their modem to remove the speed caps though so you shouldn't get insanely bad contention like it is possible cable.

Ricka182

Thanks all... I wasn't sure about it, but I wanted to try it anyway. It's already uninstalled, as I've figured out what you've all mentioned.

I only have a Linksys N router, WRT160 I think...so there's probably no way to measure what I actually get.. I may bite the bullet and upgrade to the standard I-net package, which goes upto 12Mbps. It would cost me another $24 a month though...

If I knew how to remove a speed cap, I don't know if I would anyway, only because it's a rented modem from Comcast. I know, that runs me an extra $6 a month, but I must have bad luck with modems.. The last 2 cable modems I bought on my own died after a year...

Again, thanks all for your advice.

tomahawkeer

I use a very VERY old free version of PRTG on our network, and about the only thing I had to set up was a SNMP community string on the routers port, and then use that to get the info through PRTG. Im not sure how well the home based routers work with this, or even if its possible, our work router is a cisco 2811 and I know it also works on 2600 series without an issue. No idea about home based routers however, never thought to try it.