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Just installed and initially configured PRTG for our organization and I having it doing just about everything we need it to do, the last sensor we’re looking for is a way to monitor the available bandwidth between our sites that are connected through MPLS. PRTG has listed on their site that the HTTPS Advanced sensor should be able to do this but after setting it up we were getting numbers that were way off.

I looked at trying to tie in IPERF somehow but only came across something that looked like it was designed for Linux (were all Windows). Was hoping someone in the community had any luck implementing a sensor like this.

*Side note I’ve seen that Solarwinds has a tool that is designed for this or is at least advertised to do this but the price tag is well above what were looking for as a nonprofit.

7 Spice ups
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Trying to understand what you want to monitor.

Are you looking at actual bandwidth used on the MPLS, the unused bandwidth (contracted bandwidth less used bandwidth), periodic testing of the maximum available bandwidth, …

What I do is monitor the actual used bandwidth from the switch that my MPLS plugs into, with the chart having a fixed axis that matches my contracted bandwidth.

@Paessler_AG

@greg-paessler

1 Spice up
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Are you trying to monitor the “available” bandwidth or the bandwidth being utilized at any given time. Do you have access to a router or switch in the path of the mpls circuit? If so see if that device supports netflow or possibly sflow. I use PRTG netflow sensors to query the Fortigate at each of our sites to monitor the traffic volume over our site to site VPN links.

1 Spice up
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NetCrunch network monitor will do that for you pretty much out of the box. Evaluate it before you make a final decision. Netflow monitoring is quite extensive: Monitor Network Services, Devices, Sensors, Bandwidth, Traffic

NetCrunch works completely unrestricted for first 30 days. This month there’s also a free, permanent license giveway for all spiceworks users. Here: Spiceworks users special: NetCrunch network monitor license giveaway!

Free support is included, even for trial installations.

@AdRem_Software

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Adding your routers and using the SNMP Traffic sensor may give you the information you are looking for.

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Hi Tyler, Assuming this is bandwidth between sites as others have stated your options are SNMP traffic at the interface to identify trends, spikes and unusual traffic. Netflow for overall bandwidth consumption by system and connection and QoS round trip monitoring with the use of remote probes and the QoS Round Trip sensor https://www.paessler.com/manuals/prtg/qos_quality_of_service_round_trip_sensor . Let me know if you have any questions.

@Paessler_AG

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Thanks everyone for all the replies! Sorry if I was unclear in the OP, what I’m looking for is essentially a speedtest like sensor to monitor our MPLS bandwidth or other connections. So say we are paying for a 1gig line I’m looking for a sensor that will test that line every X amount of minutes to see what the speed is ( I know it won’t be 100% with overhead and the fact other people will be using the circuits. )

Greg (Paessler) The QoS Round Trip sensor almost seems like it would do what I’m looking for but not quite

@greg-paessler

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Thanks for the offer but one of my biggest pet peeves is when a company/site doesn’t list prices and makes you submit a form for a quote. I understand why it’s done, but it turns me off from the get go.

2 Spice ups
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Hi Tyler, SNMP traffic would monitor your WAN speed based upon a regular polling interval of 60 seconds. You could lower the scanning interval to 30 seconds to get more data that you could look at from the historic data tab to see every poll (raw data) in an adhoc reporting fashion. Here is another idea for measuring download speed utilizing a script.

https://kb.paessler.com/en/topic/11583-measure-download-speed