You are not logged in.

#1 2006-08-01 20:12:13

chane
Member
Registered: 2003-12-02
Posts: 93

Bandwidth Consumption - How to Identify

I am having an issue reconciling what I am seeing on my box and what my ISP is reporting that I am using for bandwidth consumption.

For a sample hour, they report the following usage:

   Usage: 0.240 GiB In / 0.374 GiB Out

Which if I am reading this correctly is 240MB in and 374 MB out.

However, when I use a utlility called vnstat I am getting:

    112 MB In / 247 MB Out

Question: what other tools should I be trying to use to identify the discrepency.  I thought I could be hacked, but I'm pretty sure I have not been compromised (not 100% though).  I run very few services (ssh / http / smtp / pop3 / imap), run osiris on it nightly and various rootkit detection scripts.

The CPU utilization is about what I expect; I just don't understand the wide differences in the bandwidth consumption.

I realize this is a pretty broad question, even a pointer where I can learn more about how to analyze network issues would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Chris....

Offline

#2 2006-08-04 16:29:55

alexpnx
Member
From: Nicosia, Cyprus
Registered: 2006-06-10
Posts: 47

Re: Bandwidth Consumption - How to Identify

for network monitoring you could check "ntop" and "iftop"

Offline

#3 2006-08-08 17:38:43

chane
Member
Registered: 2003-12-02
Posts: 93

Re: Bandwidth Consumption - How to Identify

ok - I'm official outside my comfort zone.  I took a tcp dump and analyzed in wireshark (the sniffer previously known as ethereal).  I am seeing a lot of ARP packets that originzate from my ISP's routers.

Couple of questions for those who know more.

1. What is a lot of ARP traffic?  I am seeing 220K packets & 15MB over a 10 minute span.  I would think this is a bit excessive.  Is it realated to the size of their network.  At my last provider, I saw total inbound traffic during quite periods (late at night) of around 10MB per _hour_, so that is my limited comparision point.

2. Can I safely block this traffic in iptables?  Some of it if it is not directed at my MAC address?  Or should I just not worry about it and filter it out of my network reports when looking for problems.

Thanks,
Chris....

Offline

#4 2006-08-08 18:05:16

allucid
Member
Registered: 2006-01-06
Posts: 259

Re: Bandwidth Consumption - How to Identify

ARP usuallly should only be used initialy when you first connect before your IP is known. I am no expert, but seeing a lot of ARP traffic like that usually signifies malicious behavior (ARP Spoofing/Poisoning).

Check out wikipedia for some better background info if you haven't already. They cover networking stuff pretty well.

Offline

Board footer

Powered by FluxBB