Bandwidth monitor?

September 12, 2005 9:04 AM

I need software, OS X (including Darwin or XWindows) or Windows 2K, that can be set to automatically check the maximum download or upload speed to and from multiple machines outside my WAN at given time intervals by doing pre-set tasks and recording the total time the tasks take and the size of the total data transferred. I do not need software that shows me the current throughput of whatever random surfing or emailing I'm doing.

This is for an office environment where, according to my initial tests, the overall "speed" of a workstation's connection to the Internet can fluctuate by 80 percent over the course of a day. I need better stats, though. I'll be running this app, if one can be found, over the next week or so, and then submitting them as part of a report about the insufficient bandwidth's effect on job-related tasks.

posted by Mo Nickels to computers & internet (4 comments total)

How are your scripting skills? To figure out how long it takes to copy a known amount of data over the network at specific times, you could write a simple shell script that sends/receives a file and uses the time program to tell you how long it took. Schedule the script by adding it to your crontab.

The best way to attack this problem, though, is to measure all the traffic traversing your router(s). Have you heard of MRTG? It's a fantastic tool that gives you graphs, updated every 5 minutes by default, and will give you a much better idea of your daily usage patterns.
posted by pmbuko at 12:01 PM on September 12, 2005

I can't use MRTG because I don't control the network here.

Besides, the whole point is that our IT/IS people--who no doubt know damned well that the bandwidth sucks--are foot-dragging in doing something about it. They have dozens of anecotal reports gathered over years with work-specific details, but until they see hard numbers they refuse to do anything about it. They are probably already running a program like MRTG. I need an end user-based solution that details how day-to-day work is affected so that we can replace the anecdotal evidence with hard numbers and eliminate one more of the self-made roadblocks they've put in place.

I just knew somone would suggest scripts, but I don't have the time for it, nor are my skills up to snuff.
posted by Mo Nickels at 12:23 PM on September 12, 2005

This is what you need. Just add the perl script to your OS X crontab, and pick a big file.
posted by SweetJesus at 8:37 PM on September 12, 2005

By the way, ignore everything about converting the perl script to an exe (perl2exe). Just install the latest version of perl if it isn't there, and you'll be fine.
posted by SweetJesus at 8:40 PM on September 12, 2005