NIC Statistics

[rboynton]

Perhaps someone can shed some light on this one. When I look at the external network connection performance tab, I see the kbps numbers for all traffic except for secured traffic. When a connection is made that has some form of encryption, I see a zero kbps even though a connection is ongoing. Why would encrypted connections not be reflected in the NIC stats?

[adrien]

We pull those stats from SMNP, so if it's not reporting them...

When you say secure, do you mean an SSL connection to / from WinGate, or is it NAT traffic through WinGate?

[rboynton]

I'm not sure. My remote control software (Famatech's RAdmin) uses 3DES encryption. When I establish a remote connection, either to view or to transfer files, the stats do not show anything.

[logan]

Is it possible that the bandwidth is tallied up after the connection is closed? What happens to the bandwidth if you log out and log back in again.

[rboynton]

No, it appears to not know anything took place. This is strange. I transferred a 20meg file and started with 2022877656 as the starting "in bytes" and it was only 2022878759 after the transfer. During the transfer the packet count under the general tab (in and out) did not increment either, except a few packets for unrelated background processes.

[adrien]

what does the activity show up as in GateKeeper's activity window?

if NAT, then that would explain it, since NAT outbound traffic (i.e. relayed upstream) doesn't get reported to SNMP, since it doesn't get up to the protocol level in the stack.

[rboynton]

Yes, it does indeed show a NAT connection. If the stats do not show up because of NAT, then would bandwidth restrictions and the like be ineffective when using NAT? Here is my issue: we were using a two way satellite for internet connectivity. We were limited to so much bandwidth each day, so I would diligently watch our usage by looking at the amount each user was using. We sometimes got caught unaware when the company said we went over our quota. I'm wondering if that was the cause.

Edit:
We use NAT for everything, and the stats work just fine. It just appears that the stats do not work properly when an encrypted session is running.

[adrien]

We don't use SNMP for bandwidth management - so it won't affect WinGate's BW management.

How are you doing BW restrictions?

Adrien

[rboynton]

We have not implemented that process yet, but it is on my "to do" project list. Is there any other way to get an accurate showing of BW usage except by looking at the NIC stats?

[adrien]

Hi Rob

Do you mean BW as in per second, or total usage?

I'd need to check up on exactly what gets reported from the driver. I.e. if the protocols get stats from miniport drivers (NIC drivers), then that should cover NAT traffic, since it got sent out a miniport which should have counted it. It may well depend on the actual statistic as to whether it's collected by protocols (e.g. TCPIP.sys) or miniport (NIC) drivers.

Adrien

[rboynton]

In our case, it would be total daily usage. I would think per second usage would actually be considered "throttling", which may well apply to some folks.

Thank you for looking into that, Adrien.

...Rick