[Discuss] Network monitoring tool recommendation

[richb at pioneer.ci.net (Rich Braun)]

David Rosenstrauch <darose at darose.net> asked:
> We've got some machine (or machines) sucking up a lot of bandwidth on
> our network.  I'm trying to pin down exactly what, but not having much
> luck so far.
>
> The network's got about a dozen machines

Check out munin, http://munin-monitoring.org.  You don't say which Linux
distro you're using, but most of the distros have packages for this (named
munin-node for client, munin for server).

The advantage of this tool vs. cacti or the others is that it's
self-configuring.  By default a lot of charts are already in place for you,
and the server doesn't need any configuration other than a list of nodes.  Set
up one machine with the server, set up munin-node client on all the others,
then you get a web page on the server with links to piles of graphs for each
client.

Learning curve for this is much shorter than most, if you're just trying to
solve a quick problem like this.

-rich