Wanted - program to log the noise margin of a router

It would be really useful to have a program which would interrogate the
router every minute and keep a log of the SNR. That would make
pattern-spotting easier. Does anyone know of such a program?
Or has anyone the programming ability to make one?

My router is a Netgear DG834 version 2 ... and so that's the one I'm
particularly interested in ... but, because that router is so widely
used, if any kind (and skilled) person did come up with such a program
or script, it would certainly be appreciated by an enormous number of
users.
--
Chris

Chris <nospam@[127.0.0.1]> wrote on Wed, 7 Dec 2005 at 08:43:32:
>It would be really useful to have a program which would interrogate the
>router every minute and keep a log of the SNR. That would make
>pattern-spotting easier. Does anyone know of such a program?
>Or has anyone the programming ability to make one?
>
>My router is a Netgear DG834 version 2 ... and so that's the one I'm
>particularly interested in ... but, because that router is so widely
>used, if any kind (and skilled) person did come up with such a program
>or script, it would certainly be appreciated by an enormous number of
>users.

If that router has a Syslog capability, enable it (sending the output to
your PC; you may need to fix its IP address, and allow it through any
software firewall). A good freeware Syslog server program is Kiwi Syslog
Daemon <http://www.kiwisyslog.com/info_syslog.htm>.

Hopefully, you will find ADSL Status syslog entries including SNR in
amongst loads of other stuff. The freeware version of Kiwi allows enough
filtering of log output to file to capture just the ADSL Status from my
Vigor router.

You can then import the tabbed file logs from Kiwi into Excel and plot
SNR v. date/time.
--
Tony

On Wed, 7 Dec 2005 08:43:32 +0000, in uk.telecom.broadband you wrote:

> It would be really useful to have a program which would interrogate the
> router every minute and keep a log of the SNR. That would make
> pattern-spotting easier. Does anyone know of such a program?
> Or has anyone the programming ability to make one?
>
> My router is a Netgear DG834 version 2 ... and so that's the one I'm
> particularly interested in ... but, because that router is so widely
> used, if any kind (and skilled) person did come up with such a program
> or script, it would certainly be appreciated by an enormous number of
> users.

I did this with my X3 and a simple bash script running on a Linux box on my
network (but you could do it in Windows, too). The script used wget to save
the router stats page locally, then parsed the page it had downloaded to
obtain the relevant values (the X3 uses Javascript to build its stats page,
so rather handily, each stat is assigned to a variable in Javascript which
makes extraction fairly simple). Finally, it wrote the values it had parsed
to a csv file and slept for 10 seconds before deleting the downloaded stats
page, wgetting the page again and repeating the parser process. In other
words, you just need to look at the source code for the stats page and work
out how to extract the relevant data. On Windows you should be able to do
it all using a VBScript that runs in the background. Google should be your
friend.

The parser part of my script was:

SNR=`cat adsl.htm | grep st_dw_snr -m 1 | cut -d \" -f 2`
ATTN=`cat adsl.htm | grep st_dw_line_attenuation -m 1 | cut -d \" -f 2`
MOD=`cat adsl.htm | grep st_modulation -m 1 | cut -d \" -f 2`
ERR2=`cat adsl.htm | grep st_dw_errored_seconds -m 1 | cut -d \" -f 2`
CRC=`cat adsl.htm | grep st_dw_crc -m 1 | cut -d \" -f 2`
LINE=`date +%x`" "`date +%H:%M:%S`",$SNR,$ATTN,$MOD,$ERR2,$CRC"
echo $LINE>>values.csv

Iwan

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>, Tony
<(E-Mail Removed)> writes
>Chris <nospam@[127.0.0.1]> wrote on Wed, 7 Dec 2005 at 08:43:32:
>>It would be really useful to have a program which would interrogate
>>the router every minute and keep a log of the SNR. That would make
>>pattern-spotting easier. Does anyone know of such a program?
>>Or has anyone the programming ability to make one?
>>My router is a Netgear DG834 version 2 ... and so that's the one I'm
>>particularly interested in ... but, because that router is so widely
>>used, if any kind (and skilled) person did come up with such a program
>>or script, it would certainly be appreciated by an enormous number of users.


>If that router has a Syslog capability, enable it (sending the output
>to your PC; you may need to fix its IP address, and allow it through
>any software firewall). A good freeware Syslog server program is Kiwi
>Syslog Daemon <http://www.kiwisyslog.com/info_syslog.htm>.
>Hopefully, you will find ADSL Status syslog entries including SNR in
>amongst loads of other stuff. The freeware version of Kiwi allows
>enough filtering of log output to file to capture just the ADSL Status
>from my Vigor router.
>You can then import the tabbed file logs from Kiwi into Excel and plot
>SNR v. date/time.

Thanks, Tony. I haven't yet been able to find out whether the Netgear
DG834 has a Syslog capability. Does anyone know?

That Kiwi Syslog Daemon <http://www.kiwisyslog.com/info_syslog.htm>
you mentioned looks useful - if I can use it with the DG834.

Has anyone tried this with the DG834?
--
Chris

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>, Iwan Davies
<NOSPAM-(E-Mail Removed)> writes
>On Wed, 7 Dec 2005 08:43:32 +0000, in uk.telecom.broadband you wrote:
>
>> It would be really useful to have a program which would interrogate the
>> router every minute and keep a log of the SNR. That would make
>> pattern-spotting easier. Does anyone know of such a program?
>> Or has anyone the programming ability to make one?
>>
>> My router is a Netgear DG834 version 2 ... and so that's the one I'm
>> particularly interested in ... but, because that router is so widely
>> used, if any kind (and skilled) person did come up with such a program
>> or script, it would certainly be appreciated by an enormous number of
>> users.
>
>I did this with my X3 and a simple bash script running on a Linux box on my
>network (but you could do it in Windows, too). The script used wget to save
>the router stats page locally, then parsed the page it had downloaded to
>obtain the relevant values (the X3 uses Javascript to build its stats page,
>so rather handily, each stat is assigned to a variable in Javascript which
>makes extraction fairly simple). Finally, it wrote the values it had parsed
>to a csv file and slept for 10 seconds before deleting the downloaded stats
>page, wgetting the page again and repeating the parser process. In other
>words, you just need to look at the source code for the stats page and work
>out how to extract the relevant data. On Windows you should be able to do
>it all using a VBScript that runs in the background. Google should be your
>friend.
>
>The parser part of my script was:
>
>SNR=`cat adsl.htm | grep st_dw_snr -m 1 | cut -d \" -f 2`
>ATTN=`cat adsl.htm | grep st_dw_line_attenuation -m 1 | cut -d \" -f 2`
>MOD=`cat adsl.htm | grep st_modulation -m 1 | cut -d \" -f 2`
>ERR2=`cat adsl.htm | grep st_dw_errored_seconds -m 1 | cut -d \" -f 2`
>CRC=`cat adsl.htm | grep st_dw_crc -m 1 | cut -d \" -f 2`
>LINE=`date +%x`" "`date +%H:%M:%S`",$SNR,$ATTN,$MOD,$ERR2,$CRC"
>echo $LINE>>values.csv
>
>Iwan

It's good to see that this newsgroup is populated by such competent
people! I am impressed by your expertise - and yet, for my use, things
would need to be simplified a bit, to put it mildly.
You make me feel I have the brain of a cat!

Can anyone translate this for a bear of little brain?

I suppose there would have to be some way the program would log into the
router, putting in username and password, and then doing the equivalent
of going to the router status page and pressing the "statistics" button.

Has anyone managed to do anything like this with a Netgear DG834 and
Windows XP?
--
Chris

On Wed, 07 Dec 2005 13:09:37 +0000, Chris wrote:

> Thanks, Tony. I haven't yet been able to find out whether the Netgear
> DG834 has a Syslog capability. Does anyone know?

It does - look under the logs option and you'll see it there.

--
Regards
Tony
(Take out the garbage to reply)

Chris wrote:

> Has anyone managed to do anything like this with a Netgear DG834 and
> Windows XP?

I've just written a small program that logs my routers stats every 15
minutes and the traffic stats once a day. Unfortunately for you I
haven't got a Netgear router so it won't be much use to you - it's very
router specific. If nobody else comes up with a suggestion then mail me
and I'll see if I can convert it.

Quite interesting though. I've got a stable 2MB line (famous last
words?) but from a short run the downstream noise does seem to wander
about a bit (15.9 dB to 17.5 dB over a couple of minutes).

--
Ian

Use the Reply-To address to contact me.
Mail sent to the From address is ignored.

In article <pan.2005.12.07.13.31.12.805508@tjhpropertygarbage .co.uk>,
Tony Hogarty <(E-Mail Removed)> writes
>On Wed, 07 Dec 2005 13:09:37 +0000, Chris wrote:

>> Thanks, Tony. I haven't yet been able to find out whether the Netgear
>> DG834 has a Syslog capability. Does anyone know?

>It does - look under the logs option and you'll see it there.

Thanks. Found it. The Kiwi software doesn't have setup instructions
for it though.
See http://www.kiwisyslog.com/help/Syslogd/index.html
--
Chris

Chris wrote:
> In article <pan.2005.12.07.13.31.12.805508@tjhpropertygarbage .co.uk>,
> Tony Hogarty <(E-Mail Removed)> writes
>> On Wed, 07 Dec 2005 13:09:37 +0000, Chris wrote:
>
>>> Thanks, Tony. I haven't yet been able to find out whether the
>>> Netgear DG834 has a Syslog capability. Does anyone know?
>
>> It does - look under the logs option and you'll see it there.
>
> Thanks. Found it. The Kiwi software doesn't have setup instructions
> for it though.
> See http://www.kiwisyslog.com/help/Syslogd/index.html

Think you'll find it's more the setting up of the router to broadcast
the logs which you have to do the Kiwi program will just receive what is
sent to the PC it's on..

On Wed, 7 Dec 2005 13:17:08 +0000, in uk.telecom.broadband Chris wrote:

> In article <(E-Mail Removed)>, Iwan Davies
> <NOSPAM-(E-Mail Removed)> writes
>>On Wed, 7 Dec 2005 08:43:32 +0000, in uk.telecom.broadband you wrote:
>>
>>> It would be really useful to have a program which would interrogate the
>>> router every minute and keep a log of the SNR. That would make
>>> pattern-spotting easier. Does anyone know of such a program?
>>> Or has anyone the programming ability to make one?
>>>
>>> My router is a Netgear DG834 version 2 ... and so that's the one I'm
>>> particularly interested in ... but, because that router is so widely
>>> used, if any kind (and skilled) person did come up with such a program
>>> or script, it would certainly be appreciated by an enormous number of
>>> users.
>>
>>I did this with my X3 and a simple bash script running on a Linux box on my
>>network (but you could do it in Windows, too). The script used wget to save
>>the router stats page locally, then parsed the page it had downloaded to
>>obtain the relevant values (the X3 uses Javascript to build its stats page,
>>so rather handily, each stat is assigned to a variable in Javascript which
>>makes extraction fairly simple). Finally, it wrote the values it had parsed
>>to a csv file and slept for 10 seconds before deleting the downloaded stats
>>page, wgetting the page again and repeating the parser process. In other
>>words, you just need to look at the source code for the stats page and work
>>out how to extract the relevant data. On Windows you should be able to do
>>it all using a VBScript that runs in the background. Google should be your
>>friend.
>>
>>The parser part of my script was:
>>
>>SNR=`cat adsl.htm | grep st_dw_snr -m 1 | cut -d \" -f 2`
>>ATTN=`cat adsl.htm | grep st_dw_line_attenuation -m 1 | cut -d \" -f 2`
>>MOD=`cat adsl.htm | grep st_modulation -m 1 | cut -d \" -f 2`
>>ERR2=`cat adsl.htm | grep st_dw_errored_seconds -m 1 | cut -d \" -f 2`
>>CRC=`cat adsl.htm | grep st_dw_crc -m 1 | cut -d \" -f 2`
>>LINE=`date +%x`" "`date +%H:%M:%S`",$SNR,$ATTN,$MOD,$ERR2,$CRC"
>>echo $LINE>>values.csv
>>
>>Iwan
>
> It's good to see that this newsgroup is populated by such competent
> people! I am impressed by your expertise - and yet, for my use, things
> would need to be simplified a bit, to put it mildly.
> You make me feel I have the brain of a cat!
>
> Can anyone translate this for a bear of little brain?
>
> I suppose there would have to be some way the program would log into the
> router, putting in username and password, and then doing the equivalent
> of going to the router status page and pressing the "statistics" button.
>
> Has anyone managed to do anything like this with a Netgear DG834 and
> Windows XP?

Don't be impressed - it was all learned off the web and what I know about
Linux scripting could be written on a matchbox. Which just goes to
illustrate, really, what a really cool thing the Internet is :-)

Besides, I think a cat's brain is probably quite impressive, especially in
terms of geographical intelligence. :-)

Iwan