How can I track a days worth of total bandwidth usage?

[Mark Mattix]

I've been trying to figure this out for a while now... I have setup SNMP with Solarwinds NPM to gauge the bandwidth over a link using the OID,

iso.org.dod.internet.mgmt.mib-2.interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifOutOctets &

iso.org.dod.internet.mgmt.mib-2.interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifInOctets but these seem to only show the current bandwidth utilization at the time of polling the device. I want this information but I also need to know the total amount of bandwidth traversing over a link for an entire day.

I'm trying to gauge the amount of bandwidth used for a server that's continually replicating to a backup server. So I would like to know the amount of data that was transferred for the entire day and also the maximum load amount during that time. Can I setup something like this on a 2960 switch or perhaps create a SPAN port that is linked to a system with bandwidth monitor software?

Thanks for any advice!  -Mark

[Marvin Rhoads]

Netflow is the best tool for this, assuming you have a router in the path that supports Netflow. (L2 switches and most L3 switches do not but most routers do.)

Given a Netflow-capable device, export the flows to a Netflow server (Solarwinds and Manageengines make licensed ones and one can also use an open source one like ntop). There you can look at total volume of traffic generated from a given source-destination address pair.