------------------------------------ Tony Kom Office: (434) 296-0230 tkom@nrao.edu http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~tkom/ Charlottesville, VA Summer Student National Radio Astronomy Observatory ------------------------------------

My name is Tony Kom, and I'm a summer student at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, VA.

The NRAO has 17 different sites networked together using routers. Routers control the flow of data from one computer on a network to another. They contain rules that permit or deny access to the network and they also keep statistics. Some of these may be the amount of data flowing in and out, the number of transmission errors, or the number of times a computer tries to access the network. We can use SNMP to ask the router for these numbers and use tools to analyze and graph them. Although the routers are configured to collect traffic information, we have no easy mechanism to monitor and analyze the data for performance and for intrusion detection. My main assignment is to implement a system that will gather this data systematically and use tools to display the data in an organized, graphical manner. I used two tools, the Multi-Router Traffic Grapher (MRTG) and the Round-Robin Database Tool (RRDtool), to graph the network links over time to make the data much more useful.

• Networks & Routers
Routers control the flow of data from one computer on a network to another. They contain rules that permit or deny access to the network and they also keep statistics. Some of these may be the amount of data flowing in and out, the number of transmission errors, or the number of times a computer tries to access the network. We can use SNMP to ask the router for these numbers and use tools to analyze and graph them.



• MRTG: Multi Router Traffic Grapher
MRTG is a tool to monitor the traffic load on network-links. MRTG generates HTML pages containing graps which provide a LIVE visual representation of this traffic.


• RRDtool: Round-Robin Database
RRDtool is an enhanced, streamlined extension of MRTG. MRTG is very clunky in the fact that it generates each graph (we are generating 582 graphs!) every 5 minutes, creating a lot of overhead. One of the main features of RRDtool is that it only creates a graph when you ask for that graph, increasing its speed by over 20% over MRTG. It also uses a round-robin database (RRD) system to store time-series data (i.e. network bandwidth, errors, whatever) in a very compact way that will not expand over time.

• RRD graphs
• MRTG graphs (outdated, MRTG is no longer running)
• MRTG website
• RRDTool website

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• My Resume

• Summer Schedule - 2002 Research Experiences for Undergraduates Program
• Research Summary Presentation (PowerPoint .ppt)
• Research Summary Paper: Tools for Analyzing Router Statistics (Word .doc)
• Summer student Pics