Internet connection monitor using Raspberry Pi

[matt40k]

I was thinking of creating a package or something that ran on a Raspberry Pi that monitored your internet connection. Basically you would configure to say, monitoring your public school website, Google, your router, your server(s), email then it'll give you a simple status web page that would display if the services are ok or if they are degraded (poor response time\random packet loss).

 

It would be alerting, but that might be a bit difficult informing your ISP that your internet is down, if your internet down, but it could send an email for degrades and post-outages. I think the key thing would be reporting. I know from the support side, you have problems tracking down "random" issues if the customer is vague. Also it gives you a better position if you've got hard facts, ie it's not my switch, it's the LAN port on your router.

 

I think it's important it's a device on the network that could be plugged in anywhere as this will give you an actual real-world status, also it needs to be on a non-live system so it can't impact it. Benefit of the Raspberry Pi is that it's fairly cheap, low power and small - so you could hide it in some office at the other end of the school.

 

Good idea? Already been done?

[twin--turbo]

I was thinking of creating a package or something that ran on a Raspberry Pi that monitored your internet connection. Basically you would configure to say, monitoring your public school website, Google, your router, your server(s), email then it'll give you a simple status web page that would display if the services are ok or if they are degraded (poor response time\random packet loss).

 

It would be alerting, but that might be a bit difficult informing your ISP that your internet is down, if your internet down, but it could send an email for degrades and post-outages. I think the key thing would be reporting. I know from the support side, you have problems tracking down "random" issues if the customer is vague. Also it gives you a better position if you've got hard facts, ie it's not my switch, it's the LAN port on your router.

 

I think it's important it's a device on the network that could be plugged in anywhere as this will give you an actual real-world status, also it needs to be on a non-live system so it can't impact it. Benefit of the Raspberry Pi is that it's fairly cheap, low power and small - so you could hide it in some office at the other end of the school.

 

Good idea? Already been done?

 

 

There's various sites like montastic for monitoring web sites.

 

Linux webmin has a service/server monitor built in ( you could run that on pi )

 

 

or just bash script it with pings and mail commands.

 

Rob

[matt40k]

There's various sites like montastic for monitoring web sites.

 

Agreed, but there have been instances where the outside world can see your website, but not your internal users. It was more to see if your actual internet connection works and if it doesn't work, at what point has it failed - internal lan, router, isp dns server, or if it's the actual website.

 

Linux webmin has a service/server monitor built in ( you could run that on pi )

 

It's a bit overkill for what I wanted. Just wanted a simple traffic light system page and a nice Excel report.

 

or just bash script it with pings and mail commands.

 

True, I was hoping to make it a bit more user-friendly.

[twin--turbo]

Output the results of the BASH script to an auto refresh HTML page.

 

Rob

[LosOjos]

It's a bit overkill for what I wanted. Just wanted a simple traffic light system page and a nice Excel report.

 

...

 

True, I was hoping to make it a bit more user-friendly.

 

Parse the BASH output for status info and present it in a simple traffic light format? i.e. you don't have to frighten the user with BASH output, you can simply check for problems and alter your traffic lights as you see fit - the BASH output will act as your log when it comes to diagnosis

[matt40k]

Sorry, was thinking user friendly as in easy to configure rather then output.

 

It's most likely going to be a bash script, it's about my limit when it comes to linux!! Unless I outsource it...

[peterp]

How would it get the data? SNMP? or were you thinking of actually plugging it into the network and having it monitor packets flowing though it? (Store and forward). If the later, the Pi will be seriously underpowered for this job.

[twin--turbo]

fping google. (good bad ugly )

fping router ( good bad ugly )

fping website ( good bad ugly )

time download 4mb file from website.

 

Push to html.

[matt40k]

Yer, like @twin--turbo, just basic ping, http responses, maybe a few others like dns. Wouldn't bother with SNMP, it'll only be good for your internal network as it'll be blocked outside of your network. If that's what you wanted you'd use nagios or something. Network traffic would be wireshark but that's pretty hardcore, I mean you don't need to sniff the network to know you've got loopback!! So that's out.

 

PS: Not sure, Pi is pretty good with streams of data, it's only an issue if you want to start capturing it.