pmGraph
What is pmGraph ?
pmGraph is a software application for network monitoring, which is an important part of bandwidth management and optimisation. The aim of pmGraph is to enable network administrators, especially at universities, to more easily monitor and manage their networks. pmGraph is the first component of our BMO Tools project to be released as free, open source software.
Table of Contents
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Introduction
pmGraph is a visualisation and graphing tool that is designed to complement pmacct, a network monitoring and auditing tool. The two tools are supplied together as a debian package, and instructions for installing pmGraph cover the installation of both tools.
pmacct monitors traffic on a firewall, router or bridge, or collects information from multiple routers, and stores the network data in a database. The database permits powerful analysis, however there is no user-friendly interface to access the data. pmGraph addresses this issue by providing a graphical overview of the pmacct data, with a user friendly interface.
We have compiled a list of other available network monitoring software for reference and comparison.
Main features
- User friendly, simple interface
- Shows info about the connections between remote and local machines, and ports used
- Host name resolution using DNS and DHCP servers
- Shows usage for a specific IP address or port
- Configurable number of results
If you investigate pmGraph and decide not to use it, please let us know why in order to help us to improve it.
Usage and requirements
pmGraph is designed to compliment pmacct , a piece of network monitoring software. More requirements and details for pmacct can be found here. pmacct runs on Unix-like systems,e.g. Ubuntu, FreeBSD, Solaris etc. , so there must be at least one such system in the network.
pmGraph is platform independent software. It has been developed in Java and is designed to work in a servlet container.
pmGraph is quite lightweight, and requires only 8MB of hard disk to run. However, it relies on other, bulkier programs. If you don't already have Tomcat, Java6, mySQL server and pmacct, you will need a total of 300 MB to get pmGraph running successfully. These components will be installed for you if you use the package installation and you do not need to an understanding of these to install and use pmGraph.
Installation
Instructions for installing pmGraph
Documentation
Various documents are available, including User Guide and FAQs.
You can also get the documentation in a pdf format here:
pmGraph Documentation - PDF 
(848k)
Help us to develop pmGraph
pmGraph is under active development by Aptivate staff and volunteers, to make it a more flexible and powerful tool, with advanced user-friendly graphing capabilities. Collaborators on the project are both welcome and important for further development. Please contact us if you'd like to get involved, or see our more detailed developers' guide.
Known limitations of pmGraph at present:
- Proxy servers interfere with network monitoring
- Would be useful to classify hosts into groups (e.g. departments or customers)
- Pmacct database size grows without bounds unless pruned
- Viewing graphs of long time periods is very slow
See the Known Limitations page for more details.
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