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I need to monitor the traffic rate in my LAN. I have installed nagios core 3.2 and I can monitor services like CPU load, disk usage, http server, etc. but now, How to monitor traffic?

I am using GNU/Linux Debian Squeeze in all the machines of my LAN.

EDIT:

Switch: Cisco 1900 series

I have tried this tutorial but it refers to files that does not exists in my system (eg. /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/switch.cfg), I think is because of version.

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  • It would be helpful to know which plugins you have tried or looked at and what kind of router you are trying to monitor.
    – JamesCW
    Dec 13, 2011 at 16:12
  • I wish I could answer your question directly, but after hours of frustration with Nagios, I installed Zenoss Core and never looked back. Dec 13, 2011 at 22:53
  • I tried Zenoss core but I don't understand it. Some good tutorial for Zenoss core?
    – rendon
    Dec 14, 2011 at 0:45

5 Answers 5

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Nagios - Monitoring Switches and Routers

http://nagios.sourceforge.net/docs/3_0/monitoring-routers.html

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  • Thanks but that is really useless, that manual is outdated.
    – rendon
    Dec 9, 2011 at 20:02
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For this kind of thing I use MRTG to record and graph the traffic and Nagios to alert based on what MRTG reads. Check out Nagios plugins such as check_rrd_bw.

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Are you sure you don't want a tool like MRTG? That's made for this sort of thing. The only wa i can think of would be using an SNMP GET from Nagios, but I've never used it for that... most of my remote stuff has been through NRPE.

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  • Have you used it? Do you think it will work?
    – rendon
    Dec 14, 2011 at 0:47
  • I have used MRTG to monitor ingress/egress traffic on a cisco 3845 router with no issue. It produces nice graphs - you just have to make sure that you enable SNMP on the device you're trying to monitor (in case it isn't enabled by default). Check with the manufacturer for details.
    – Matthew
    Dec 14, 2011 at 18:07
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There are doezens and dozens of brand-specific SNMP plugins on http://exchange.nagios.org and http://www.monitoringexchange.org that will do this. On Nagios Exchange, for example, there are 37 plugins in the "Cisco" category.

You might also want to try the check_snmp_int plugin, here: http://nagios.manubulon.com/ I think it will work with switches, but you'd have to double-check to be sure.

Whether or not MRTG is a good answer to this question depends on what the asker means by "monitor"; MRTG will make nice graphs, and gather the data for you, but it does no alerting. Using check_mrtgtraf, you can have nagios "monitor" the MRTG data, this is a lot of work unless you already have MRTG set up.

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  • I mean monitor LAN bandwidth. Thanks for the info!
    – rendon
    Dec 29, 2011 at 2:42
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Once you've found a comfortable way to poll the data you're looking for, PNP4Nagios will give you a pretty good way to graph it automatically.

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