[H-GEN] tracking network usage

[Robert Brockway]

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On Tue, 16 Sep 2003, Johann Kwiatkowski wrote:

> To get to the point, any ideas where I can proceed from here ( even if I
> have made an error somewhere, I would really like to know where 13 gigs

Hi Johann.  If there isn't sufficient logging in place it's probably a bit
late for this 13GB :(

> of data has gone! over a two week period) , or should I just notch this
> up to a bad experience, reinstall and start again. What advice can ppl
> give me to increase my logging capabilities too, so that I have a very
> good idea (instead of just the standard install that redhat puts in) of
> what goes in and out of my gateway machine?

I have also had accounts on volume charging ISPs and have used 2 different
methods to watch traffic.

For dialup pppstats is useful, but in the more generic case, iptables (or
another accounting/firewall package) will come to the rescue.  Setup
iptables rules to monitor traffic passing through the firewall from each
of your internal machines.  It isn't hard to write a script to watch
traffic over a period of time and send out warnings if the traffic gets
too high.  These can be emails or even SMSes, etc.  When I was regularly
using a vol charged account my script would eventually shutdown the link
if I ignored its please for help.  While this did allow someone to DoS me
by pumping data at me I considered this an acceptable risk for a link that
was essentially for personal use.

Cheers,
	Rob

-- 
Robert Brockway B.Sc. email: robert at timetraveller.org, zzbrock at uqconnect.net
Linux counter project ID #16440 (http://counter.li.org)
"The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens" -Baha'u'llah

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