How can I log / monitor the used bandwidth externally?

Question

Hey everyone,
As the topic says, I'm searching for a way to log the utilization of my network externally.
So I found this: https://community.sophos.com/products/unified-threat-management/f/management-networking-logging-and-reporting/31918/monitor-bandwidth-usage, bus as far as I can see, IPTraf will only give me insights when I log into the console.
I'd prefer in the most simple way something which logs it into a file.

I wouldn't even care (but instead prefer!) if it would write just a single line into a text file and overwrite it continuously.
On my network, I got a media server with some friends beeing able to access media from it via my internet connection.
I don't care what they do - but would be interested to see how much my PPPoE is utilized throughout the day.

As I use home automation, I could parse this line with the home automation server software I use (IP-Symcon), this could be written into a variable and displayed in nice graphs and do all kind of calculations.

Do you have any idea what I could do? I even enabled syslog-logging, but from what I've seen so far, this information is not useful at all.
Regards,
Matthias

This thread was automatically locked due to age.

BAlfson · Answer

Matthias, that thread is over ten years old, and a lot of capability has been added. Look at the 'Bandwidth Usage' tab in 'Logging & Reporting >> Network Usage'. 
 If the access is always via HTTP/S, then, with some extra effort, you could use the custom, automatically-emailed reports in 'Logging & Reporting >> Web Protection'. If you're interested in that, please open a new thread with that question. 
 Cheers - Bob

sachingurung · Answer

Hi Matthias, 
 The monitoring is possible via graphs and reports as mentioned by Bob. I don't think an additional feature will be incorporated when an alternative is available. You can still raise it as a feature request here and cast your votes. 
 Fingers crossed.

MatthiasGinster · Answer

I beg to differ. 
 I managed it - and so can all other as well with whatever tool, it needs a command line utility which gives back an answer. 
 So I inquire every 60 seconds for the updated values of octets in an out for my eth0. (PPPOE interface OID changes with every reconnection attempt) 
 I deduct the value collected 60 seconds earlier from the new one. The result is the 60 seconds average bytes. 
 This gets multiplied with 8 (bits) and divided by 60 000 000. 
 This will give me the Mbit/s average for each minute. 
 Hope this can help anyone else that wants to log the speed like me. 
 Regards, 
 Matthias

MatthiasGinster · Answer

Hi Balfson, 
 
 I just saw that I forgot to answer, what I'm doing in the Software (IP-Symcon, programmed in PHP) is in the Code that follows, it is using SNMP and faily simple. In fact I just check every 60s about the Bytes sent and received and calculate the Delta, which is divided by 60. Thisi s my Speed. Sorry that the variables are in german partially, but I'm german :-) I guess you can still understand what the script does. 
 
 <? // ***************************************************************************** 
 //$host = "192.168.178.44"; // IP Adresse der UTM //$community = "public"; // SNMP Community $binary = "C:\IP-Symcon\modules\SNMP-Get\SnmpGet.exe"; $data = " -r:192.168.1.1 -t:10 -c:public -o:."; // ***************************************************************************** //SNMP Query Funktion function snmp($oid) { global $binary, $data; //$oid = ltrim($oid,"."); $value = IPS_Execute($binary, "$data$oid", false, true); $value = trim($value); return $value; } 
 $in_alt=GetValueFloat(17435 /*[Komponenten\Sophos UTM\SNMP-Get Sophos UTM\in]*/); $out_alt=GetValueFloat(11891 /*[Komponenten\Sophos UTM\SNMP-Get Sophos UTM\out]*/); // ***************************************************************************** //Augehend $string = snmp ("1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.16.3")."
"; $out = explode("Value=", $string); 
 //Eingehend $string2 = snmp ("1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.10.3")."
"; $in = explode("Value=", $string2); 
 $out =Floatval($out[1]); $in =Floatval($in[1]); $data_in=$in-$in_alt; $data_out=$out-$out_alt; If ($data_in<0) {$data_in=0;} If ($data_out<0) {$data_out=0;} SetValueFloat(17435 /*[Komponenten\Sophos UTM\SNMP-Get Sophos UTM\in]*/, $in); SetValueFloat(11891 /*[Komponenten\Sophos UTM\SNMP-Get Sophos UTM\out]*/, $out); $speed_in=(($data_in)*8)/60000000; //in Mbit/s SetValueFLoat(14008 /*[Komponenten\Sophos UTM\Speed-IN]*/, (round($speed_in, 2))); $speed_out=(($data_out)*8)/60000000; //in Mbit/s SetValueFLoat(48171 /*[Komponenten\Sophos UTM\Speed-OUT]*/, (round($speed_out, 2))); 
 //****************************************************************************** // Linkstatus $integer = snmp ("1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.8.3")."
"; $stat_value = explode("Value=", $integer); $stat_value =Floatval($stat_value[1]); 
 If ($stat_value == 1) { $status="up"; SetValueBoolean(35430 /*[Komponenten\Sophos UTM\LinkStatus UTM]*/, true);} elseif ($stat_value == 2) { $status="down"; SetValueBoolean(35430 /*[Komponenten\Sophos UTM\LinkStatus UTM]*/, false);} elseif ($stat_value == 3) { $status="testing";} print $status; ?>