Viewing Graphs
Once you have configured the bandwidth manager system to gather statistics, it will save traffic statistics in the mySQL database. You can view graphs either by clicking the link in the Name field on the "View Rules" page, or by choosing it to be displayed on the main administration page.
Note that the main menu page is automatically updated to include all of the interfaces configured for statistical gathering. Now that we've waited awhile, we should have some data for our eth0 interface graph. Select eth0 in the Graphs pulldown and click "View".
The graphs above show a "day graph", which is the stats for the current day. You can get a pretty good idea what time it is from where the graph data stops. A "Day Graph" is the default graph that you will see when you click a Name stats link. On the right side statistics for the period of the graph are shown as the Max and Avg volumes recorded for both traffic (bits per second) and volume (packets per second), as well as total bandwidth used for the period of the graph. Most people only think about bandwidth, or traffic, but the truth is that most routers are limited by packets per second before total thoughput. Many low end routers max out at 1500pps or so, so it's good to know the packet volume of your network as well as the bandwidth usage.
Viewing Historical Data
The ET/BWMGR allows you to view data from any period stored on your current disk. Simply enter the date of interest in the Start Date field and click the View button to view your graph. Note that leaving the field blank defaults to setting the END of the graph to be the current time.
We left the Start Date field blank and entered 3 in the Days field clicked on "View" get the graph above. It shows the past 3 days of data. You can retrieve data for any period as long as there is data stored on your system.
Allowing Customers to View Traffic Graphs
You can allow or restrict access to graphs from outside the GUI using the default settings combined with the config for individual graphs. The default will set up the default setting for all graphs:
If you set this field to public, then all graphs are public unless they have a config file and a specific setting for that graph. By default, all traffic graphs don't have a config file, so its probably best to use "restricted" as a default setting instead of public.
To set up a config for a graph, view the graph and then click on the graph to access the
configuration setup:
The above setting sets the graph for AcmeWidgetCorp to Public and the password to snoopy. If you leave the password field blank, the graph would be viewable by everyone without a password. If you set the Graph Access to restricted, then the graph would only be accessible from the GUI.
You can use the form in the file custgrph.htm to allow your customers to access their graphs. You'll just need to give them the graph name and the password.
This file is just a skeleton of what's required to access graphs. You are free to customize this or integrate it into your web site as necessary.