Thanks to everyone who shared thoughts, ideas and experience regarding monitoring bandwidth usage on Ethernet switch ports without including broadcast traffic.
EVERYONE tends to agree that a separate VLAN for each co-located customer is the only professional way to do things "right".
I agree, and plan to move in that direction, fast. Then I won't have to worry about broadcast traffic, either!
Other recommended solutions included:
- MRTG This is great (I use it elsewhere) but it doesn't directly address the issue I have of *not* including broadcast traffic
You might want to look at cricket and RRDTool for a much more scalable solution. [http://cricket.soundforge.net/].
- Cisco 6500 switches apparently support "Private VLANS", which don't burn up IP addresses. Sounds cool, wish I had a 6500 ;-)
I'd be interested in finding out more about this as we are currently using CAT 6500 switches and burning up IP addresses can you tell me more about this? Regards, Neil.