System To Track Network Connections

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luongos5hole

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Jan 13, 2014
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I have a little project that I need to complete and am a bit unsure on how to do it. I am in need of some sort of tracking system for my network. Specifically, I want to track the number of connections to the wireless router. So basically just a system that will increment the total every time a device connects to the router. Ideally I am looking for something to show these totals in weekly, monthly, and yearly formats. I don’t require any other data to be tracked, such as usage; however, it is not a big deal if the program or software used comes with this.

I already expect to replace the current networking hardware in order to do this, so I am not really limited in that regard. As long as the hardware reasonably priced. Best case scenario is there is some sort of firmware and software that can be set-up to do what I want. If this is not possible I do have some experience with coding, so I could possible write something to do what I'm looking for.
 
Solution
MartinWilson
Which device is the gateway to the Internet? You're not goign to get much out of the Netgear, but the belkin has SNMP options as far as I can see.

http://www.voiproblem.com/emulators/Linksys/BEFSR81/v3/2.50.2/Management.html

Just use 'public' (the default) as the "get community string" and the IP address of your polling "SNMP Trusted Host"

As already mentioned, the thing is getting the info you want from SNMP on that device. Your polling software will likely need to be configured to gather the correct info from the MIBs. You can Google it. You will be looking for an OID that would need to be added to the Polling devices in order to poll for TCP/UDP connections.

Is your s the 8 port? http://www.dslreports.com/news/14807
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bill001g

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Aug 9, 2012
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You might find a router that has logging ability but it is hard to say. A more common way to do this is via SNMP query. First problem is a router that has SNMP support and then finding the correct mibs you want to monitor.

I would look to something like a dd-wrt loaded router. I am not sure 100% sure it has the values. A commercial AP like cisco might.

Then you need to select a tool to collect this data. There are a number of free ones and which you use is going to be personal preference. Some are very advanced tools. 4 that I have used are mrtg, nagios, zabbix, cacti there are a few more and of course there are commercial tools that cost lots of money.
 
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luongos5hole

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Jan 13, 2014
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So are you saying that any SNMP router will work, or will I need to find a specific one for the mibs that you mentioned. From what I understand after selecting the router I just need to connect a monitoring tool to the router, and set up some initial settings. Sorry, I don't have much experience with SNMP so I'm not 100% sure of things.

 
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bill001g

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It is mostly the mibs that are going to cause the biggest headache. You can only collect data that they have defined mibs for. Still the data you talk about would be a common thing to keep track of so it is likely there are mibs. Problem is some routers do not do a good job of documentation so you will many times have to resort to mib walks and look for the ones you need.
SNMP takes a bit to get used to but it is actually a extremely simple protocol.
 
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luongos5hole

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So after a bit of reading the way I understand that the mibs are basically a set of variables for certain things that can be tracked, which can be thought of as basically the routers form of a database. Do I have the correct way of thinking about this? So with that being said I'm assuming that I need to search for a router that has a set of mibs that will do the tracking of user connections. After that I can take those mibs and export them to display that will show the data in a human readable form. Is this mostly correct?

 
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luongos5hole

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Jan 13, 2014
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Turns out that I probably won't be able to purchase any new hardware, so I am left with the current setup. Sorry about the change, it was completely unexpected.

Linksys BEFSR81
NETGEAR WGR614 v9

Is there anything I can do with this hardware to get what I want.

 
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bill001g

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Aug 9, 2012
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going to be tough i suspect. I only looked at the manual for the wireless router and it does not have much. It does have a content filter and from what I can tell it will log successful traffic even though it says blocked. I did not spend a lot of time reading it.

Maybe you could block some minor site and then get logs of all the traffic. It shows timestamps when ips go to sites. Not exactly what you want but it should at least give you a idea of times they are actually active. Not sure you could tell if they connected and did nothing.

Hard to say this is a very old router they have added so much to newer routers.
 
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MartinWilson

MartinWilson

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Aug 13, 2013
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Which device is the gateway to the Internet? You're not goign to get much out of the Netgear, but the belkin has SNMP options as far as I can see.

http://www.voiproblem.com/emulators/Linksys/BEFSR81/v3/2.50.2/Management.html

Just use 'public' (the default) as the "get community string" and the IP address of your polling "SNMP Trusted Host"

As already mentioned, the thing is getting the info you want from SNMP on that device. Your polling software will likely need to be configured to gather the correct info from the MIBs. You can Google it. You will be looking for an OID that would need to be added to the Polling devices in order to poll for TCP/UDP connections.

Is your s the 8 port? http://www.dslreports.com/news/14807
 
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