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Network Bandwidth Monitoring

The program's main function is the monitoring and displaying of inbound and outbound network traffic which transmits through hosts. Its operation is based on periodical polling sensors on each host in the network. The traffic Sensor is a function which gathers the current traffic volume on a host's network interface. You can configure several different sensors for each host. Each sensor takes into account the inbound and outbound traffic from only one network interface. The following types of network monitoring sensors are currently supported by the program:

• 1. SNMP Sensor

  This sensor connects to an SNMP agent of a remote or local computer or another managed network device (switch, router, etc.) and gathers the values of inbound and outbound traffic via the SNMP protocol. There are a lot of network devices that support the SNMP protocol. These may include: servers and workstations working under any operating system, managed switches, routers, printers, web cameras, access points, etc. The SNMP protocol's advantage is its platform independence. To use the SNMP sensor, the SNMP agent must be available on a remote device. Also, you need to know its “Community” string. The SNMP protocol usually operates via the UDP port 161. That is why this port must be opened in your firewall.

  The SNMP service is an SNMP agent available on Windows workstations. It provides the access to the traffic information and is not installed by default. To install the SNMP service on a Windows computer, you need to follow the instructions described here:

  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc759570(WS.10).aspx

  The security settings are described here:

  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc783571(WS.10).aspx

  To configure the SNMP sensor parameters, you need to provide the host IP address or name, and its Community string. Usually, if the community has not been changed, the standard string is "public".
  The Timeout and Attempts parameters are used for fine-tuning the sensor settings in networks with large traffic or with weak physical channels. You can configure the number of polling attempts and the interval between the attempts. If the first polling fails, the program will run that polling again after the configured interval of time (Timeout). This helps to avoid receiving false alerts when a temporary network outage occurs. If all the attempts finally fail, the sensor polling will be considered as failed.

Advantages of gathering the traffic data via SNMP:

• You can poll a great number of different devices supporting SNMP: switches, network printers, computers and servers operating under Windows, Linux, etc.
• Often, you will not even need to configure remote computers. Otherwise, you will only need to enable the SNMP agent or run the corresponding service (Windows) or daemon (Linux).
• You do not need to install any additional software on remote computers except the cases when the "SNMP service" is not installed by default on a Windows system (see the above links to learn about the installing SNMP).
• SNMP does not consume much system resources.
• You do not need administrator rights on the local and remote computers.
• The SNMP polling process is hidden for network users.

Disadvantages:

• Sometimes SNMP agents are disabled by default in devices.
• The SNMP protocol's versions 1,2, and 2c are not secure. The information is not encoded in them. The protected version of the SNMP protocol is SNMPv3.

 

• 2. WMI Sensor

  Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is a set of interfaces for the operating system management through the special components (via a network or locally). With the help of this mechanism, the sensor obtains the traffic values on a particular network interface. However, WMI runs under the Windows operating system only. Therefore, this sensor can keep track traffic only of remote computers with Windows OS installed. For WMI sensors, you may need to configure WMI and other particular services on the local and remote computers for a successful operation. You can find out more about this issue in the WMI settings for working with a remote computer topic.

  To configure the WMI sensor, you need to specify the IP address or the host name. Also, a username and the according password are required for authorization on the remote computer.
  Warning! Please keep in mind the following features of the WMI mechanism. The WMI connection runs under the account with the provided credentials, but the operation itself runs under the name of that user, under whom the program is running on the local computer. This final user should have administrator rights on the remote computer. The Bandwidth Monitor service has to be started under this user account. Learn more about this issue here: Program settings.

Advantages of gathering the traffic data via WMI:

• Often, you will not even need to configure remote computers (especially when computers belong to a domain). However, you should have administration rights on remote computers to poll the traffic data via WMI.
• You do not need to install any additional software on remote computers.
• Users without administrator rights cannot affect the process of gathering the traffic information.
• The WMI polling process is hidden for network users.

Disadvantages:

• Administration rights on remote computers are required.
• The security policy will probably require some configuration (the "classic" access model instead of the "guest" model). The Firewall will probably need to be configured as well (allow DCOM connections). Learn more: WMI troubleshooting.
• WMI operates in a Windows environment only.

 

• 3. Remote Agent

  If you cannot use the SNMP protocol or WMI in your network, the traffic values can be collected with the help of the remote agent service. The remote agent is a service that gathers traffic data locally and then sends it via the TCP protocol using the 54231 port to the main application upon request (client-server). The TCP port can be changed. You need to install the remote agents on remote computers to gather the traffic data from them.

Advantages of gathering the traffic data via remote agents:

• No administration rights on remote computers are required.
• The agent is implemented as a Windows service and does not require the monitored computer to be logged on.
• The traffic polling process is hidden for network users.

Disadvantages:

• You need to install the agent service on all monitored computers.
• You need to enable the agent's TCP port (54231 by default) in the Firewall on the local and remote computers.
• The agent service operates in a Windows environment only.
• When many inactive remote agents are polled simultaneously, the polling errors can arise sometimes in some versions of Windows. This is caused by the limitations on the number of allowed outgoing half-open TCP connections. Learn more about the limitations and Windows versions affected in the System limitations on accessing remote TCP/IP opened ports topic.

To install a remote agent on a remote computer, please perform the following steps:

1. Copy the agent installation package bandwidth-monitor-agent.msi file from the folder <disk>:\Program Files\10-Strike Bandwidth Monitor\Agent\ to the remote computer or copy the file to a public share.
2. Run the installation file bandwidth-monitor-agent.msi on the remote computer. Please wait until the installation process finishes.
3. Add the agent service executable file <disk>:\Program Files\10-Strike Bandwidth Monitor Agent\BMAgent.exe to the list of exceptions in the Windows Firewall.

To configure the remote agent, run the agent configuration utility. The utility is installed together with the agent service (into the same program folder). You can start the agent configuration utility using the Start menu: Start | Programs | 10-Strike Bandwidth Monitor Agent | Configure 10-Strike Bandwidth Monitor Agent.

To apply the configuration changes, you need to restart the agent service 10-Strike Bandwidth Monitor Agent Service (the service name is Svc10StrikeBMAgent).

Important!
The agent package can be installed remotely on domain computers using the Group Policy. Learn more about the remote agent installation: Installing remote agents on domain computers via Group Policy.

 

Traffic sensors are polled by several threads simultaneously. The number of polling threads can be configured in the program settings.

You can configure the polling interval for each sensor individually. This helps decrease the sensor polling traffic during the program's operation and decreases the CPU load.

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