How to install ntop ?

[Denna]

Is it possible to install ntop on Asuswrt-Merlin ?

 

[Xentrk]

I have not seen anyone do this myself. But you got me curious so I looked at the ntop website and see the new version of ntopng is supported on raspberry pi and Ubuntu as well as a few other OS. I have a Ubuntu VM and a Pi. So I will install them there and see how useful it is for analyzing traffic.

There is an entware package called netdata that may be of interest to you in analyzing network traffic. It has many charts and graphs to keep you entertained.

 

[Denna]

@Xentrk,

Thanks for the help.​

 

[Xentrk]

@Xentrk,

Thanks for the help.​

I made a mistake. The package is netdata, not netflow. You can read more about it in this post:
https://www.snbforums.com/threads/netdata-monitoring.35644/
https://www.snbforums.com/threads/netflow.20813/

 

[Xentrk]

I made a mistake. The package is netdata, not netflow. You can read more about it in this post:
https://www.snbforums.com/threads/netdata-monitoring.35644/
https://www.snbforums.com/threads/netflow.20813/

Steps:

opkg update

opkg install lipcap

opkg install ipcad

opkg install netflow

/opt/etc/init.d/S60netdata start

Go to browser to view data, e.g.:

http://192.168.1.1:19999/

Sample screen shots below

 

[Xentrk]

 

[Denna]

Steps:
opkg install netflow

/opt/etc/init.d/S60netdata start

@Xentrk,

I was able to install it with just one command:

opkg install netdata

That's a tremendous amount of graphs and is great for systems management.

I was looking for something that would allow viewing the traffic of a particular host on the router.

For now, the closest I've found is the Entware-NG version of "iftop" and running:

iftop -p -i eth0 -P -o source

 

[Xentrk]

@Xentrk,

I was able to install it with just one command:

opkg install netdata

That's a tremendous amount of graphs and is great for systems management.

I was looking for something that would allow viewing the traffic of a particular host on the router.

For now, the closest I've found is the Entware-NG version of "iftop" and running:

iftop -p -i eth0 -P -o source

I installed iftop to see what it is about. I saw a lot of data flashing on the screen. I will need to read up on it some more to better understand how to use it.

I installed ntopng on my Ubuntu VM last night using the instructions here:

https://www.vultr.com/docs/how-to-install-ntopng-on-ubuntu-16-04

But it was not the most recent version. I could not get any stats to generate. Probably has to do with the VM. I ran out of time to work on it as it was getting late. I will pick away at it as time permits.

Update: I installed and compiled ntopng from GitHub on the Ubuntu. I have it up and running. The problem I now have is my VM is not using the IP address of my Network. So it can't monitor it. I need to research how to change the virtual network adapter to use the 192.168.x setting of my router.

 

[Denna]

@Xentrk,

I wonder about the amount of effort it would take to get it running on an RT-AC88U with Asuwrt-Merlin.​

 

[Xentrk]

@Xentrk,

I wonder about the amount of effort it would take to get it running on an RT-AC88U with Asuwrt-Merlin.​

I did some searches on that topic for about 20 minutes when I saw your OP and was not able to find any information. Perhaps it has not been done? I will search the web again tomorrow.

 

[Xentrk]

I finished installing ntopng 3.0 on Ubuntu VM and have it monitoring my router traffic. Thanks to web searches, I was able to overcome the roadblocks I came upon. I still need to read the user guide and other references I found to set it up for best practices. There is the free VMWare Player version of VMWare that has less options that @RMerlin uses that can be used instead of the Pro version. The VMware Workstation Pro is spendy. But educational discounts apply and a free 30 day trial is available. While it is fresh, I wanted to capture the steps and references that helped me with the install.

Installing ntopng 3.0 on Ubuntu 16.04 Desktop running on VMWare Workstation 12 Pro (Windows 10 Client)

In VMWare, Configure the Virtual Machine Netware Adapter. Change from Nat to Bridge to get the same IP subnet as the router. Otherwise, you will be using the VM Network Adapters which are on a different IP address and will not be able to monitor router network traffic.

Install Git on Ubuntu per the instructions here: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-git-on-ubuntu-16-04

Install package dependencies as described here: https://github.com/ntop/ntopng/blob/dev/doc/README.compilation

Install ntopng per the instructions here http://www.ntop.org/get-started/download/

Navigate to the git ntopng directory, e.g. cd /git-2.14.0-rc1/ntopng

Issue the command: ntopng

To access ntopng gui web interface in a browser, either the Ubuntu or Windows client, enter the IP address of the Ubuntu client and port 3000, e.g. http://192.168.1.106:3000

 

[Xentrk]

@Xentrk,

I wonder about the amount of effort it would take to get it running on an RT-AC88U with Asuwrt-Merlin.​

Windows x64 is supported.

http://www.ntop.org/get-started/download/

If you decide to install it, let me know how it goes.

 

[Denna]

@Xentrk,

I'd like to get ntop /ntopng working on a router running Asuswrt-Merlin for the purpose of monitoring / troubleshooting networking issues.

At this point, it doesn't appear there's an off the shelf way to do that unless you're a developer.​

 

[Xentrk]

@Xentrk,

I'd like to get ntop /ntopng working on a router running Asuswrt-Merlin for the purpose of monitoring / troubleshooting networking issues.

At this point, it doesn't appear there's an off the shelf way to do that unless you're a developer.​

When I fired up my Ubuntu VM on my win 10 laptop, then typed the IP assigned by my router to the Ubuntu VM followed by port 3000 (e.g. 192.168.3.149:3000), I was able to see the router network traffic and all of the clients on it. I also connected to my pfSense router and was able to monitor the traffic there as well. It should work the same if it is installed on Win x64. As long as you are connected to the router you want to monitor, it should work.

 

[Denna]

@Xentrk,

Doesn't ntop have to run as a daemon on the router ?​

 

[Xentrk]

@Xentrk,

Doesn't ntop have to run as a daemon on the router ?​

I did not install ntopng or any other programs on my routers when I tested it out.

The other product nProbe is required if you want to use flow collection. But it appears to be more than I want to bite off:

Flow Collection
Flow collection requires ntopng to be used in conjunction with nProbe which can act as probe/proxy. The communication between nProbe and ntopng takes place over ZeroMQ, a publish-subscribe protocol that allows ntopng to communicate with nProbe. An environment where a remote nProbe is physically monitoring from a NIC and sending monitored flows to ntopng can be deployed as

 

[Xentrk]

I may gave the Windows Install a try next week.

ntopng setup for windows #491

https://github.com/ntop/ntopng/issues/491

I have extended the UserGuide with windows docs. Please refer to the following pdf: https://github.com/ntop/ntopng/blob/dev/doc/UserGuide.pdf

 

[bitmonster]

What did you all end up going with? I have now installed 'netdata' on my 86u via entware, but I am concerned about resource usage if left running.

ntopng looks like the way to go. Anyone got this running on a 86u? How's it working for you?

 

[Xentrk]

What did you all end up going with? I have now installed 'netdata' on my 86u via entware, but I am concerned about resource usage if left running.

ntopng looks like the way to go. Anyone got this running on a 86u? How's it working for you?

I have not seen anyone complain about resource usage with netdata. Lots of kewl charts and graphics. But never felt the needs to go back and look at it.

I never did get around to testing ntopng on Windows 10 OS after successfully having it working on the Ubuntu VM.

On pfSense, ntopng is tightly integrated with the firmware as a package and integrates with the Web GUI after installation. I am having an issue getting Amazon Echo to play nicely on my pfSense box lately and your message is a reminder that ntopng may be able me determine where the issue is.

 

[bitmonster]

Thanks.. I'm fine running a Linux VM, I also have an old netbook (Intel Atom) about ten years old with 2GB RAM that may be fine to run a minimal Linux too. Does ntopng need something running on the Asus RT-86u router? netdata looks great but most is system info of no use to me rather than useful network info. So ntopng looks interesting.