mrtg - What is MRTG
SYNOPSIS
The Multi Router Traffic Grapher (MRTG) is a tool to moni
tor the traffic load on network-links. MRTG generates
HTML pages containing GIF images which provide a LIVE
visual representation of this traffic. Check
http://www.stat.ee.ethz.ch/mrtg/ to see what it does.
Go to http://ee-staff.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/mrtg for
all the details about mrtg.
USER PAGES
MRTG is written in Perl and C and works under UNIX and
Windows NT. MRTG is being successfully used on many sites
around the net. Check the MRTG-Site-Map on:
http://ee-staff.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/mrtg/users.html
HIGHLIGHTS
Portable
MRTG works on most UNIX platforms and Windows NT.
Perl
MRTG is written in perl and comes with full source.
Portable SNMP
MRTG Uses a highly portable SNMP implementation writ
ten entirely in Perl thanks to Simon Leinen. There is
no need to install any external SNMP package.
SNMPv2c support
MRTG can read the new SNMPv2c 64bit counters. No more
counter wrapping.
Reliable Interface Identification
Router interfaces can be identified by IP address,
Description and Ethernet address in addition to the
normal Interface number.
Constant size Logfiles
MRTG's logfiles do NOT grow. Thanks to the use of a
unique data consolidation algorithm.
Automatic Configuration
MRTG comes with a set configuration tools which make
configuration and setup very simple.
Performance
Time critical routines are written in C thanks to the
initiative of Dave Rand my Co-Author.
Graphics are generated directly in PNG format, using
the GD library by Thomas Boutell.
Customizability
The look of the webpages produced by MRTG is highly
configurable.
RRDtool
MRTG has built in hooks for using RRDtool. If you are
straped for performance this may help.
DETAILS
MRTG consists of a Perl script which uses SNMP to read the
traffic counters of your routers and a fast C program
which logs the traffic data and creates beautiful graphs
representing the traffic on the monitored network connec
tion. These graphs are embedded into webpages which can be
viewed from any modern Web-browser.
In addition to a detailed daily view, MRTG also creates
visual representations of the traffic seen during the last
seven days, the last four weeks and the last twelve
months. This is possible because MRTG keeps a log of all
the data it has pulled from the router. This log is auto
matically consolidated, so that it does not grow over
time, but still contains all the relevant data for all the
traffic seen over the last two years. This is all per
formed in an efficient manner. Therefore you can monitor
200 or more network links from any halfway decent UNIX
box.
MRTG is not limited to monitoring traffic though, it is
possible to monitor any SNMP variable you choose. You can
even use an external program to gather the data which
should be monitored via MRTG. People are using MRTG, to
monitor things such as System Load, Login Sessions, Modem
availability and more. MRTG even allows you to accumulate
two or more data sources into a single graph.
HISTORY
In 1994 I was working at a site where we had one 64kbit
line to the outside world. Obviously everybody was inter
ested in knowing how the link was performing. So I wrote a
quick hack which created a constantly updated graph on the
web, showing the traffic load on our Internet link. This
eventually evolved into a rather configurable Perl script
called MRTG-1.0 which I released in spring 1995. After a
few updates I left my job at DMU, to start work at the
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Due to lack of time
I had to put MRTG aside. One day in January of 1996, I
received email from Dave Rand asking if I had any ideas
why MRTG was so slow. Actually I did. MRTG's programming
was not very efficient and it was written entirely in
he had tried what I had suggested for improving MRTG's
speed. Since the changes did not help much, he had decided
to rewrite the time-critical sections of MRTG in C. The
code was attached to his email. His tool increased the
speed of MRTG by a factor of 40! This got me out of my
'MRTG ignorance' and I started to spend my spare time
developing of MRTG-2.
Soon after MRTG-2 development had begun I started to give
beta copies to interested parties. In return I got many
feature patches, a lot of user feedback and bug fixes. The
product you are getting now is wouldnt be in this state if
it hadn't been for the great contributions and suport I
received from of many people. I would like to take this
opportunity to thank them all. (See the files CHANGES for
a long list of folk people who helped to make MRTG what it
is today)
READ ON
Learn more about MRTG by going to the mrtg home page on:
http://ee-staff.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/mrtg
AUTHOR
Tobias Oetiker <oetiker@ee.ethz.ch> and many contributors
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