The benefits of using ByteOMeter with an SNMP router
A common setup in a broadband connected home consists of one or more computers and game consoles, a DSL or cable modem and a router. The router acts as a middleman between your equipment and the internet. While providing a firewall against hackers and other unwanted visitors, it also takes care of directing all the traffic flowing from your network to the internet and the other way around.
Track all traffic by monitoring an SNMP router
If there is more than one network device connected to the router, it is difficult to accurately track how much bandwidth is being used at any given time and how much data in total has been transferred on the connection. A normal bandwidth monitoring program typically monitors only the network cards in the computer on which it is installed. Therefore, it cannot detect a filetransfer being made on another computer or the traffic generated by a game console being used for online play. However, if the router, through which all the traffic flows, is SNMP enabled it can provide various information about itself, including traffic totals.
SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) is a network protocol which ByteOMeter speaks as of version 1.5. This means that ByteOMeter can monitor SNMP enabled routers and therefore provides the following benefits over other bandwidth monitors:
- Internet traffic from the whole network is monitored.
- ByteOMeter does not need to be running all the time to log traffic*.
- Internet traffic is distinguished from local network traffic.
- Traffic generated by other PCs or even game consoles shows up in the real-time graph window.
In order to gain these advantages, your router must be SNMP enabled. An easy way to check this is to simply download ByteOMeter and enter the router setup - if it is there ByteOMeter is ready to monitor the SNMP router right away..
*ByteOMeter must sometimes be turned on to obtain information from the router in order to eg. provide a warning if traffic limits are exceeded. |
