Network bandwidth measurement

This is probably more of a general network question than a security question. But scince I know there are some competent people here, I´ll ask anyhow :)

I need a program that can measure the actual bandwidth of a connection. The ones that connect to som generic site on the Internet (lots of web based such around) won´t do the trick.

The thing is I have a pretty large number of DSL connections on my network, and I need to know if the ISP is giving me the bandwidth I´m paying for.

The perfect scenario would be to have a server component on one of the central servers, and a small client on one of the computers at the peripheral DSL sites.

I´ve tried NetStatLive which is available at www.analogx.com. It works great, but it involves manually copying files to one of the computers at the DSL sites to see the actual bandwidth maximum. I could use something more automated.

Suggestions?

Use MRTG or NRG

Thanks for the suggestion, however:

I´ve used MRTG before, and it is an exellent program, but far to complex to apply here. We´re talking about 60 different DSL locations here. None of which have switches at all, just hubs, so there are no SNMP traps to collect there. NRG I´m not familiar with, but it looks pretty complex as well. I need something that is easy to set up and manage scince there are so many connections that need to be measured.

NRG and MRTG use the same kind of setup. It's actually pretty easy to setup once you take the time to find out how (there are some scripts included to get the basics). They both work by using snmp GET (not traps). So if you have a dsl router that supports snmp you can use either. Once you know how to setup monitoring for 1 router it's just a matter of copy 'n paste and changing the ip to add the rest.

Edit: You will want to monitor the DSL routers, not the switches/hubs. The switches/hubs will give you an idea of the LAN usage not the up/down stream bandwith of your dsl connection.

Thanks again for the response. I should probably tell you that I got some experience in networking from before. ;)
Problem is that this is bridged connections. No routers on the DSL sites. So there´s nothing to get SNMP from. I need something to stick on one of the computers on the DSL sites.

Aha. If the computers are regular windows machines you may be able to get some info using the regular windows performance monitor. There are some tools in the resourcekit that will let you log this info too.

trying the following link and see if it suits your needs:

http://www.nagios.org
http://www.ntop.org
http://www.opennms.org

-w0rm3y

check out this thread posted a little while back.

bandwidth tut
http://www.antionline.com/showthread...706#post628706

bandwidth test
http://home.cfl.rr.com/eaa/Bandwidth.htm

You can try System Mechanic
Download to try at

http://www.iolo.com/downloads.cfm

It has a relative speed test
Test to perform download 100,500 kilobytes of data or 1 megabyte

You will see after the test........elapsed time,data received,current speed,average speed and peak speed!

Have you tried bing? It is a *nix tool used based on ping that can measure bandwidth from one node to another.

Thank you all! I´ll try out some of the links I´ve been given here and get back to you with a status report later on.