westell - monitor westell brand DSL bridges and routers


Purpose

Got a westell brand DSL bridge or router? Just about every westell DSL device made in the past 5 or more years can send status packets to the LAN with usage information. The program below can be used to enable, disable, monitor, and archive these messages in either human or machine readable form.

Download

Download the latest version for linux systems. Last updated January 2010

Usage 
westell [--verbose] --bcast <bcast> [--info] [--enable] [--disable]
westell [--verbose] [--iface <iface>] [--datefmt fmt] [--rate sec] --monitor
westell [--verbose] [--iface <iface>] [--datefmt fmt] [--ifs ifs] [--rate sec] [--daemon] --serve ip:port

Examples 
Enable generation of status packets
$ westell --bcast NN.NN.NN.NN --enable

Monitor status packets (aggregated with 10 seconds of data) with human readable output
$ westell --monitor --rate 10

Monitor status packets (aggregated with 2 minutes of data) with machine readable output available on a TCP socket
$ westell --daemon --serve NN.NN.NN.NN:PPPPP --rate 120 --datefmt '%y.%m.%d-%H:%M' --ifs ' '

Human Readable Output

Below is a sample of the human readable output format for a 2 second monitoring interval.

The monitoring packet sent by the bridge/router provides 5 sections of data:

  1. Bridge/Router status (link status, and uptime)
  2. Upstream DSL signal strength (margin) and bandwidth (max rate)
  3. Downstream DSL signal strength (margin) and bandwidth (max rate)
  4. ATM cell counters for DSL facing side
  5. Ethernet packet counters for Ethernet facing side
Using this data, the program can calculate an extensive set of information (current rates, average packet sizes, ATM overhead, and efficiency) 

Got packet on 2010-01-02-18:28:00:
  Status               : online
  Uptime               : 82D 23H 48M (since 2009-10-11-19:39:58)
  Upstream
    Margin             : 11.0 db   
    Power              : 11.9 db/Hz
    Attenuation        : 26.0 db   
    Max Rate           : 864 kbps, 2037.7 cells/sec
    Max Rate           : 864 ATM, 782 AAL5, 764 IP-1500, 522 IP-64
  Downstream
    Margin             :  3.5 db   
    Power              : 19.5 db/Hz
    Attenuation        : 44.5 db   
    Max Rate           : 7616 kbps, 17962.3 cells/sec
    Max Rate           : 7616 ATM, 6898 AAL5, 6736 IP-1500, 4598 IP-64
  ATM
    Signal Lost        :         99
    Frame Lost         :          0
    FEC Errors         :       7268    [     33 cells ]
    CRC Errors         :         10
    HEC Errors         :          0
    Loopback Cells     :          0
    TX Cells           :       7536    [   1114 cells ]
    RX Cells           :     167424    [  35727 cells ]
  ETH
    Dropped Packets    :          0
    TX Packets         :   60251826    [   1114 pkts  ]
    RX Packets         :   38011144    [    557 pkts  ]
  Upstream
    Max Rate           :  864.0 kbps, 2037.7 cps
    Current Rate       :  236.2 kbps,  557.0 cps,  278.5 pps      [  27.3% ]
    IP Averages        :   40.0 bytes/pkt
    ATM Averages       :  106.0 bytes/pkt,    2.0 cells/pkt
    ATM Overhead       :   66.0 bytes/pkt,   33.0 bytes/cell, 37.7% efficient
    Utilization        :  10.3% data,  17.0% overhead,  72.7% idle
    Utilization (kbps) :   89.1 data,  147.0 overhead,  627.8 idle
  Downstream
    Max Rate           : 7616.0 kbps, 17962.3 cps
    Current Rate       : 7574.1 kbps, 17863.5 cps,  557.0 pps      [  99.5% ]
    IP Averages        : 1483.4 bytes/pkt
    ATM Averages       : 1699.8 bytes/pkt,   32.1 cells/pkt
    ATM Overhead       :  216.4 bytes/pkt,    6.7 bytes/cell, 87.3% efficient
    Utilization        :  86.8% data,  12.7% overhead,   0.5% idle
    Utilization (kbps) : 6610.0 data,  964.1 overhead,   41.9 idle

Machine Readable Output

The machine readable output can be used for whatever else you want. For example, I've used it to create graphs of the data. 

10.01.02-18:27 120.000 online 7170470 11.0 11.9 26.0 864 4.5 19.5 44.5 7616 0 0 6603 10 0 0 0 0 1737 1093 0 173 196
10.01.02-18:29 120.000 online 7170590 11.0 11.9 26.0 864 3.0 19.5 44.5 7616 0 0 9965 19 0 0 0 0 35885 1098196 0 34367 17594
10.01.02-18:31 120.000 online 7170710 11.0 11.9 26.0 864 1.0 19.5 44.5 7616 0 0 3459 5 0 0 0 0 6942 500 0 210 293
10.01.02-18:33 120.000 online 7170830 11.0 11.9 26.0 864 4.0 19.5 44.5 7616 0 0 6706 22 0 0 0 0 4243 602 0 226 240
10.01.02-18:35 120.000 online 7170950 11.0 11.9 26.0 864 4.5 19.5 44.5 7616 0 0 5839 8 0 0 0 0 2884 424 0 161 162
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