Bandwidth monitoring through iptables
Do:
iptables -I INPUT ! -i lo; iptables -I OUTPUT ! -o lo
Then setup a cronjob that runs once a month when your host checks your bandwidth that does:
iptables -R INPUT 1 ! -i lo; iptables -R OUTPUT 1 ! -o lo
to reset it. You could do iptables -Z INPUT instead, but if you ever add any more rules to INPUT it would reset their counters too.
Next setup a cron job that runs regularly (I have it run every hour) that does:
iptables-save -c > /etc/iptables
That saves every table, all the chains in those tables, and all of the rules in those chains with their counters to the file /etc/iptables (feel free to pick a different name, that’s just what I use).
After that put:
iptables-restore -c < /etc/iptables
in your rc.local. This restores those rules and their counters on boot.
Now just do iptables -L -v to see your current bandwidth usage. Look at those rules’ counters, not the chains’ counters.
This entry was posted on Saturday, May 26th, 2007 at 8:33 am and is filed under gnu/linux. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
