Monitoring LAN bandwidth

[stebbo]

Hi All,

I have Nagios setup to monitor my switches and this appears to be working well. However, my LAN rarely ever seems to be "busy" even though sometimes moving files takes a reasonable amount of time.

Is there a Nagios plugin which will allow me to test my LAN bandwidth by moving some large files around from machine to machine, or can anyone recommend a low cost piece of software that will allow me to do the same thing? I suppose I could just setup a copy at specific times and let the switch monitor the speed but I'm thinking there must be something a little more sophisticated than that.

Cheers,
Chris.

[sreinhardt]

I'm sure there are some products out there that specifically test switch speeds, offhand I am not aware of any. I will say that scp\sftp\samba copying is a reasonable way to verify the speeds are what you expect. You also have to remember that nagios and mrtg are only collecting data at the set intervals, usually every 5 minutes. To get a more informed idea of how your network is performing, and what the traffic is being used for, we have a product called Nagios Network Analyzer that should be out within a few weeks or so that could help you quite a bit.

[stebbo]

Hi Spenser,

thanks for the reply. Do you have any info on this new product you can point me toward?

Thanks,
Chris.

[slansing]

There is a public beta available from last year located here:

http://labs.nagios.com/2012/10/16/nagio ... blic-beta/