Bandwidth Plots: Misleading Data

[vask]

The timeframes on the bandwidth plots range from:
15 min to 1 year

The plots are displayed by:
IP

However, several different devices can have used a certain IP address over the course of a year!!! This means that bandwidth data is MISLEADING or less useful to say the least!

Bandwidth data should be recorded by MAC!!! If the concern is having too many MAC addresses to choose from then there should be an option to limit the options displayed to active clients only. See:
http://www.gargoyle-router.com/phpbb/vi ... ?f=7&t=477

Of course it would be even nicer if one could:
- copy the MAC address client on the plot
- see the hostname of the client on the plot
- copy the hostname of the client on the plot

[Eric]

You are correct that an IP can change. This is one of the key reasons why I initially only saved data for hosts assigned a static IP.

It's true that the latest implementation no longer makes this a requirement... but it's still highly recommended.

There is also a very good reason why data is displayed by IP and not MAC. Iptables only has access to the source MAC address of a packet, not the destination MAC address. The destination MAC only gets assigned after iptables is done with it. This means that if I tried to do things based on mac I could only monitor outgoing traffic where the local host is the source, and we know the MAC.

If you'd care to implement a MAC caching system to efficiently associate destination IPs with MAC addresses within the bandwidth iptables module, be my guest. If you could pull it off, your contribution would be most welcome.

[vask]

You are correct that an IP can change. This is one of the key reasons why I initially only saved data for hosts assigned a static IP.

It's true that the latest implementation no longer makes this a requirement... but it's still highly recommended.

I work at a hostel. Each night there may be around 100 guests. Maximum stay here is 2 weeks.

Defining static IPs is not really an option.