Remote Network Monitoring @ RedButton

At RedButton remote network monitoring and on site management is a key part of the service we provide to our clients. We actively monitor every single managed router in our network and take action to resolve any technical issues.

What you might be interested in is how our technicians keep their eagle eyes on the network. Well we've got an internal interface for just that purpose, key information listed on it is the percentage of routers online and routers that are offline. When we see routers that are down we get on it like a company that gets paid by the Megabyte, pronto! The green icons below mean that all is well, the red icons with the doctors briefcase means help is needed.


As you can see we don't only monitor the central hotspot device but also all repeaters that have been set up behind it to increase the wireless signal coverage. What's more, as long as all these devices are online, we have dedicated remote access to the respective firmware web interfaces so that we can quickly and efficiently troubleshoot problems and undertake reconfigurations remotely. Without the need for complex port forwarding, dmz or any other hard to maintain workarounds.

Everything is automated and built-in - a technician (or even a customer in case of a self-install) plugs a preconfigured RedButton device into the network and it magically appears on our monitoring system once the orange light goes on, see previous post on our custom firmware. None of our competitors currently offer a similarly feature-rich, powerful and yet easy to maintain system.

The monitoring system as it stands is already quite advanced but we'll continue to add to it over time. Knowing whether a router is online or not, when we last saw it if online and so on is critical information yet its only the tip of the ice berg when it comes to ongoing high quality service. Watch this space!

So how do I really check my usage?

From time to time users query the amount of credit used up during a session. This is only natural when logging on to check email and seeing usage that does not fit earlier patterns. In this post, which is generally applicable whether using RedButton or not, we discuss what may cause usage spikes, how to keep them in check and how you can monitor usage in fine grained detail.

In terms of your exact usage you may verify it yourself by logging into your RedButton account ("Buy Credits" from the portal page) and clicking on "Internet Usage History" on the left. It will show you when you logged in, for how long and especially what your uploads/downloads and credit usage was per session. This aggregate information is useful but does not provide fine grained detail in terms of which programs ended up using the connection.

When it comes to usage specifics, unfortunately there are many programs in the background that use bandwidth without your explicit instruction. Examples are Windows or Mac automatic security related system updates, automatic anti-virus/firewall updates, java updates, VoIP programs using bandwidth behind your back to route other people's phone calls, iTunes downloading movies and many more. Such usage is sporadic in nature, one day there will be zero available updates (though anti-virus programs tend to update itself daily) and the next your Windows Update will try to download the next service pack which may take up tons of MB's (Windows XP SP3 is 48MB for instance).

In order to prevent this from happening you may temporarily turn off these services though we do not recommend turning off security related service upgrades (operating system, anti-virus/firewall upgrades etc.). If you do it will expose your computer to a whole bunch of security vulnerabilities and problems which could ultimately cause more damage than the additional bandwidth expense is worth. For example we have had confirmed cases in the past where virus checkers were not updated, customers' laptops got infected with viruses that then proceeded to upload heavy amounts of data resulting in their credits disappearing quicker than they could look.

One thing you can do is download Netlimiter Monitor (http://www.netlimiter.com/download.php), a freeware third party tool that let's you monitor which program uses up what bandwidth and how much. It is only 2.3MB large and will help you greatly in tracking down what's using up all your credits. A word of caution, this tool will give you slightly lower total upload/download figures than our system (especially uploads) because it counts the data on a different network layer than we do.

We hope we have clarified why sometimes our system, or any other, shows more usage than you yourself have explicitly initiated. If you have any questions or feedback please let us know.

Cape Town's New Free WiFi Super Circuit @ Beleza

A picture says a thousand words and so this post consists of the picture below recently taken @ Beleza - a popular restaurant that forms a part of Cape Town's Free WiFi Super Circuit as mentioned in our previous post. Thank you to Ronald from Beleza for the picture.