RV180 - incorrect SNMP interface counters

[AaronBBrown]

I am attempting to monitor bandwidth utilization of the WAN port for the RV180 via SNMP and I am getting strange results.  If a 256MB file is transferred from a remote server (without compression), the ifInOctets counter doesn't increment by anything resembling 256MB:

$ snmpget -v2c -c  public 192.168.1.1 IF-MIB::ifInOctets.5  IF-MIB::ifOutOctets.5

IF-MIB::ifInOctets.5 = Counter32: 365402138

IF-MIB::ifOutOctets.5 = Counter32: 32610053

$ rsync -aP user@server.example.com:foo ./bar ; snmpget -v2c -c  public 192.168.1.1 IF-MIB::ifInOctets.5  IF-MIB::ifOutOctets.5

...

sent 42 bytes  received 268468346 bytes  2474363.02 bytes/sec

total size is 268435456  speedup is 1.00

IF-MIB::ifInOctets.5 = Counter32: 365569933

IF-MIB::ifOutOctets.5 = Counter32: 32623611

365569933 - 365402138 = 167795

That's only 163 KB, not the ~256MB expected

I'm reasonably certain that the .5 interface is the WAN port based on the value of ipAdEntIfIndex.X.X.X.X, but even if that were not the case, none of the other interfaces increment by a value close to the amount of data transfered.  SNMP monitoring of a WAP121 on the same subnet returns expected results.  I can only assume that SNMP on the RV180 is completely broken.

The router has the latest firmware available (1.0.1.9).  There is only one network connection and the RV180 is the default gateway for all internal hosts.

[AaronBBrown]

After struggling with this for days, I found the Administration->WAN Traffic Meter page.  Enabling the WAN Traffic Meter with no limit seems to have made the SNMP counters work correctly.  This does not appear documented anywhere, is counter intuitive, and makes SNMP completely useless without the feature enabled.

[Tom Watts]

Hello Aaron, if you like, email me your Cisco ID and the serial number of your unit. We can make a feature or documentation request.

If you can gather a zip file with the config file, the SNMP output before and after the traffic meter, and provide a basic step by step to recreate on a text document. Also include what SNMP tool you're using.

Additionally, within the body of the email if you could please provide valid contact information, name, email, telephone, business hours and a few notes of information such as what kind of internet connection, who is your ISP and when was the last time the router is factory reset.

This should be sufficient information to be reviewed and properly documented.

My email is towatts@cisco.com

-Tom
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[AaronBBrown]

Thanks for the response.  In this case, it is very simple.  Take a default router, enable SNMP, transfer some data, and note that the counters do not properly increment.  Then enable the WAN Traffic Meter and it works.  If this isn't enough data to reproduce the issue, I can send you my configs.

[kimmoriesk]

Yes Completely useless as when you enable WAN traffic meter maxium throughput drops from 100+ to 40Mbps...

Would like to see fix for this ASAP. There is no way to collect statistics from WAN port at the moment.

[emcnally]

I am having the same issue with a Linksys RV130W.  The traffic counters are indicating less than 10% of the actual traffic.  On my model, there is no such page as "Administration->WAN Traffic Meter page". 

Since I am responding to a 3 year old thread, I assume this will never be fixed.

So this "commercial" router basically has no ability to indicate WAN utilization.  I was going after this capability because we may have a saturated link, but with no insight it's hard to tell Mr. Customer to pay more for something faster.

The obvious solution is chuck the 2 month old Cisco and get something that works, something like pfSense ($299 for a complete appliance, includes extensive traffic monitoring right in the router's web interface, includes traffic shaping via policy based routing (to limit bandwidth per LAN node).

Alternatively, we could get a managed switch and i could monitor the interface connected to the RV130's LAN interface, but it's such a POS in other ways (slow, unreliable web interface, virtually no manageability, it's a $25 router with an IPSEC engine in final analysis) that I don't trust that the RV130 itself is not the cause of the "internet being slow."

Very disappointed in the RV line.  They were OK for cheap back when Linksys made them, but got substantially worse after Cisco took over.

One can get an ASA 5505 for cheap on eBay, but if you read the Cisco fine-print, you'll find you need to buy SmartNet to have a valid license to IOS--and you have to ship the ASA back to Cisco for a $600 "inspection" before you can buy SmartNet.

Did I mention pfsense?  I have a 200 seat call center where it's their primary router--and it's rock solid for over 2 years in service.  lol.  Love the 3750X switches, just love them, but there are far better router options at all price points and at all feature levels.  Too bad.