[asterisk-users] Linux Software to monitor quality of bandwidth for carrying voip traffic - suggestions please?

[Kristian Kielhofner]

On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 3:19 AM, Shaun Wingrin <voipsw at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Would like to run the software to monitor the quality of the bandwidth.
>
> Suggestions welcome?
>
> Thank you.
>
> Shaun

nprobe and PF_RING are by far the most comprehensive tools I've seen
to do this under Linux:

http://www.ntop.org/nProbe.html

We've been trying to work something out with Luca (from
ntop/PF_RING/nprobe) to further the SIP/RTP abilities of
PF_RING/nprobe.  We haven't worked anything out yet but I would be
interested to hear how the Asterisk community feels about this.  The
plugin architecture could also allow for an IAX flow analyzer, for
instance...

I'm also a bit disappointed by the existing flow collectors out there
but that's a whole other rant.

I can attest the basic claims of performance, speed, and efficiency
are all true based on my experiences with nprobe in AstLinux.  I don't
think I ever fully integrated PF_RING with AstLinux but I understand
it increases the performance and capabilities of nprobe dramatically.

One of the best features of nprobe is the ability to not only export
UDP flows directly to a flow collector but to also write out that data
to ASCII and/or binary logs that can later be parsed.  If you could
combine some timestamps with this flow data you could easily provide
for quality monitoring with history for every SIP/RTP (IAX w/ plugin)
flow.  You could also analyze other flows (HTTP, evil BitTorrent, etc)
over the same connection to correlate potential voice quality issues
with other types of traffic on the network/circuit.  This ability
alone is why I think this solution is so powerful.  Of course some of
these capabilities could be built directly into Asterisk but Asterisk
wouldn't give you data on other flows, would it?  Also keep in mind a
single instance of nprobe/PF_RING running on a Linux router in a large
VoIP/Asterisk network could provide flow data and statistics for the
entire network (what people do with NetFlow now).  Something to think
about...

Of course another issue is the license and source availability.  You
have to pay for the source but it's GPL licensed.  Let your mind
ponder that for a minute...

There are some interesting docs, whitepapers, etc on the site
(nProbe/PF_RING) if you are interested.

-- 
Kristian Kielhofner
http://blog.krisk.org
http://www.submityoursip.com
http://www.astlinux.org
http://www.star2star.com