


mrtg                                                      MRTG(1)



NNNNAAAAMMMMEEEE
     mrtg - What is MRTG

SSSSYYYYNNNNOOOOPPPPSSSSIIIISSSS
     The Multi Router Traffic Grapher (MRTG) is a tool to monitor
     the traffic load on network-links.  MRTG generates HTML
     pages containing GIF images which provide a LIVE visual
     representation of this traffic. Check
     http://www.stat.ee.ethz.ch/mrtg/ to see what it does.

     Go to http://ee-staff.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/mrtg for all
     the details about mrtg.

UUUUSSSSEEEERRRR PPPPAAAAGGGGEEEESSSS
     MRTG is written in Perl and C and works under UNIX and
     Windows NT. MRTG is being successfully used on many sites
     around the net.  Check the MRTG-Site-Map on:

      http://ee-staff.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/mrtg/users.html


HHHHIIIIGGGGHHHHLLLLIIIIGGGGHHHHTTTTSSSS
     Portable
         MRTG works on most UNIX platforms and Windows NT.

     Perl
         MRTG is written in perl and comes with full source.

     Portable SNMP
         MRTG Uses a highly portable SNMP implementation written
         entirely in Perl thanks to Simon Leinen. There is no
         need to install any external SNMP package.

     SNMPv2c support
         MRTG can read the new SNMPv2c 64bit counters. No more
         counter wrapping.

     Reliable Interface Identification
         Router interfaces can be identified by IP address,
         Description and Ethernet address in addition to the
         normal Interface number.

     Constant size Logfiles
         MRTG's logfiles do NOT grow. Thanks to the use of a
         unique data consolidation algorithm.

     Automatic Configuration
         MRTG comes with a set configuration tools which make
         configuration and setup very simple.

     Performance
         Time critical routines are written in C thanks to the



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mrtg                                                      MRTG(1)



         initiative of Dave Rand my Co-Author.

     GIF free Graphics
         Graphics are generated directly in PNG format, using the
         GD library by Thomas Boutell.

     Customizability
         The look of the webpages produced by MRTG is highly
         configurable.

     RRDtool
         MRTG has built in hooks for using RRDtool. If you are
         straped for performance this may help.

DDDDEEEETTTTAAAAIIIILLLLSSSS
     MRTG consists of a Perl script which uses SNMP to read the
     traffic counters of your routers and a fast C program which
     logs the traffic data and creates beautiful graphs
     representing the traffic on the monitored network
     connection. These graphs are embedded into webpages which
     can be viewed from any modern Web-browser.

     In addition to a detailed daily view, MRTG also creates
     visual representations of the traffic seen during the last
     seven days, the last four weeks and the last twelve months.
     This is possible because MRTG keeps a log of all the data it
     has pulled from the router. This log is automatically
     consolidated, so that it does not grow over time, but still
     contains all the relevant data for all the traffic seen over
     the last two years.  This is all performed in an efficient
     manner.  Therefore you can monitor 200 or more network links
     from any halfway decent UNIX box.

     MRTG is not limited to monitoring traffic though, it is
     possible to monitor any SNMP variable you choose. You can
     even use an external program to gather the data which should
     be monitored via MRTG. People are using MRTG, to monitor
     things such as System Load, Login Sessions, Modem
     availability and more. MRTG even allows you to accumulate
     two or more data sources into a single graph.

HHHHIIIISSSSTTTTOOOORRRRYYYY
     In 1994 I was working at a site where we had one 64kbit line
     to the outside world. Obviously everybody was interested in
     knowing how the link was performing. So I wrote a quick hack
     which created a constantly updated graph on the web, showing
     the traffic load on our Internet link. This eventually
     evolved into a rather configurable Perl script called
     MRTG-1.0 which I released in spring 1995. After a few
     updates I left my job at DMU, to start work at the Swiss
     Federal Institute of Technology. Due to lack of time I had
     to put MRTG aside. One day in January of 1996, I received



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mrtg                                                      MRTG(1)



     email from Dave Rand asking if I had any ideas why MRTG was
     so slow. Actually I did. MRTG's programming was not very
     efficient and it was written entirely in Perl. After a week
     or so, Dave wrote back to me and said he had tried what I
     had suggested for improving MRTG's speed. Since the changes
     did not help much, he had decided to rewrite the time-
     critical sections of MRTG in C. The code was attached to his
     email. His tool increased the speed of MRTG by a factor of
     40! This got me out of my 'MRTG ignorance' and I started to
     spend my spare time developing of MRTG-2.

     Soon after MRTG-2 development had begun I started to give
     beta copies to interested parties. In return I got many
     feature patches, a lot of user feedback and bug fixes. The
     product you are getting now is wouldnt be in this state if
     it hadn't been for the great contributions and suport I
     received from of many people. I would like to take this
     opportunity to thank them all. (See the files CHANGES for a
     long list of folk people who helped to make MRTG what it is
     today)

RRRREEEEAAAADDDD OOOONNNN
     Learn more about MRTG by going to the mrtg home page on:
     http://ee-staff.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/mrtg

AAAAUUUUTTTTHHHHOOOORRRR
     Tobias Oetiker <oetiker@ee.ethz.ch> and many contributors




























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