Monitoring Tools

There are many tools that provide detailed statistics on network interfaces. Two very easily installed monitoring tools with great functions are ntop and Munin.

ntop

ntop monitors a network and may in some states be illegal because it creates detailed records of connections between IP addresses. Furthermore, it offers a nice browser GUI and does not need a running web server. ntop installs easily on Debian.

Enter apt-get install ntop and choose the interface you want to monitor. After software installation, type ntop -A, and enter an administrator password for ntop's admin account. Now type /etc/init.d/ntop start and point a browser to the http://IP:3000 of this system (ntop is running on port 3000). You will get a feature-rich window with a growing amount of information, especially if ntop has been for running some time:

ntop offers many possibilities. We can save the data to a database, access to a database can be secured and monitored, interfaces can be switched online...