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MRTG.author karma++'s (tobi's yummy new ISP stat graphing tool)

  • From: k claffy
  • Date: Thu Jul 15 21:53:22 1999


folks

new tool of potential operational ISP interest from Tobi 
(author of MRTG, visiting CAIDA on sabbatical this summer):

	http://www.caida.org/Tools/RRDtool/

if you use/like MRTG, check out RRDtool
	(Round Robin Database), which is
	basically the time-series graphing
	and data storage/management component 
	of MRTG, broken out and `done right'. (--tobi)

  `done right' == much more flexible/configurable, 
	(but still supports lots of auto-config stuff 
	 for folks w better things to do...)
	perhaps more importantly:
	orders of magnitude faster/scalable, 
	stores data compactly so as not to expand over time 

   so RRDtool provides a powerful building block for
   other frontends, couple of which you may have seen:
	http://www.caida.org/Tools/RRDtool/frontends/
   & can also be used via simple wrapper scripts (e.g., sh/perl)
   
   also:  RRD tool can now produce png images as well as gif
	(due to the increasing copyright sensitivity surrounding 
	 gif format. gif still default output format, 
	 but no more lzw compression.  
	 png better technical solution anyway, if legaljunk 
	 isn't compelling enough argument to switch.
	 discussing this issue further on [email protected] 
	 would be a good way to get me killed 
	 for even mentioning it (for those w that goal))
     
   portability:  should run on most reasonable unices 
	(and actually runs on NT.. ), but we're grateful 
	for feedback/experiences to [email protected]

   licensing:  
	http://www.caida.org/Tools/RRDtool/license.html
	(i always suspected karma was measureable in music.
	 tho i reckon CDnow should send tobi some royalties):

note Tobi wrote RRDtool mostly on his own time (True Knight),
been refining it this summer while at CAIDA
& releasing incremental pre-1.0 versions to dev list for a while
but reckons it's finally nanog-strength

his next windmill.caida is re-working MRTG itself,
which makes now an optimal time for ISPs 
to provide input on what additions to MRTG 
would enhance its utility for them

	[email protected]

   (so far, he's got requests/plans  for: 
	running as daemon as well as from cron;
	simpler interface for polling data of various datasources;
	template-based webpage generation both static and on demand;
	better config paradigm (perl-module-based)
	95th percentile plotting
   )


tnx,
k and tobi
@caida.org