Install and Configure Bandwidthd - Per IP Bandwidth Monitor

It is important to know traffic usage of your client if you're a Linux network administrator. You can monitor your client in text mode, graphic mode or html exported like mrtg, cacti or bandwidthd and one of my favorite bandwidth monitor is bandwidthd.


You don't need any database or snmp connection to monitor all of your client on bandwidthd, all you need just libcap, libpng, libgd and apache installed on your Linux system. And other good news is bandwidthd monitor all of your connected client per IP and per connection protocol.


Installing Bandwidthd
Prepare your Linux and download bandwidthd for Linux here. Next extract bandwidth using tar -zxvf command.


Goto extracted directory and type ./configure && make install to install bandwidth to your system.

Configuring Bandwidthd

By default all installed bandwidthd files placed on /usr/local/bandwidthd/ folder. Now goto bandwidthd installed directory and CD to etc, you'll find bandwidthd config file there. Open bandwidthd.conf using your favorite text editor like vi or nano and start edit bandwidthd config file suit your network.


Save your config and start bandwidthd using/usr/local/bandwidthd/bandwidthd. Put that command to your /etc/rc.localfile so bandwidthd can start on every time Linux boot.

Configuring Apache

You will can't see your graphic report until you set/usr/local/bandwidthd/htdocs/ folder to set as apache virtual directory. Add below line to your apache config file.

Alias /bandwidthd "/usr/local/bandwidthd/htdocs"
<Directory "/usr/local/bandwidthd/htdocs">
Order Allow,Deny
Allow from All
</Directory>
Save your work and restart apache. Next open your browser and point to http://yourlinuxserver/bandwidth.

Happy trying and good luck.