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rate(1) |
FreeBSD General Commands Manual |
rate(1) |
rate - Swiss-Army-knife traffic analyzer
rate [generic options] <-R | -A | -T | -E> [mode-specific options]
rate -L <name>
rate [-h | -?]
rate [mode select option] [-h | -?]
Rate helps an administrator to figure out what is happening in his
network at the moment. Unlike tcpdump(1), rate uses statistical
and stream-oriented traffic analysing methods, and it will never produce an
output stream at a speed beyond human perception. The output is less accurate,
however.
Rate features four different operating modes, designed to
perform the following tasks: estimating overall traffic rates (the -R
mode), determining nodes generating the highest traffic (the -A
mode), determining connections and flows generating the highest
traffic (the experimental -T mode) and extracting strings from
packets (the bonus -E mode).
Rate accepts parameters in a standard, short getopt(3) syntax.
There are several options common for all operation modes - these options are
described in the GENERIC OPTIONS section below. The operation mode
itself is chosen by one of special mode-selection options: -R, -A, -T or -E.
After a mode-selection option, no other generic options are allowed, the only
valid options are the mode-specific ones. Each operation mode has its own set
- see appropiate sections below.
After a successful startup, the application installs a packet
capturing handler, and starts to generate reports. The default report
generating policy is to dump a report to stdout every 1 second.
Always make sure rate has enough information on datalink
layer protocol present on the interface it was ordered to bind to. Consult
the -p option description for details.
- -0 c
- Replace every NUL character (ASCII 0) with c before doing regular
expression based filtering. Ignored if the -x option was not
specified. The default is '@'.
- -c
- Color (ANSI-compatible) output in modes that support it (currently: stream
analyzer and "abusers detection" mode).
- -f f
- BPF filter expression to use. Using this option causes rate to
ignore any packets NOT matching the specified BPF filter expression. For a
detailed description of BPF filter expressions syntax, consult the
tcpdump(1) manual page.
- -g
- Signal-based report generation policy. The reports are dumped whenever
rate receives a SIGUSR1 signal.
- -h -?
- Print help. rate dumps a short help on available command-line
options and quits, regardless of other options.
- -i I
- Bind to interface I. The default is 'eth0', which of course will cause a
failure on systems other than Linux. Make sure you specify the datalink
prefix (see -p) when you order rate to bind to an interface of an uncommon
type.
- -k
- Interactive report generation. The reports are dumped whenever data is
available on the standard input, which usually means you'll have to press
RETURN in order to generate a report.
- -l
- Make stdout line-buffered. This option is useful when reports are
redirected (eg. using shell redirection) to a file.
- -L N
- Loads a previously saved (using -S ) option set. No other options
are allowed when -L is being used.
- -n
- Turns off asynchronous reverse DNS lookups. Rate will print numeric
IPs rather than fully qualified domain names.
- -p N
- Datalink layer header prefix length. Every (or at least almost every)
known datalink layer protocol prefixes a packet with its own header -
which has to be stripped before the actual data essential for rate (the IP
protocol header) can be read. Rate is able to determine
automatically how many bytes to skip only for the most common datalink
layer protocols (Ethernet, FDDI, TokenRing, loopback, PPP) - in other
cases the prefix length must be specified using this option. It is
EXTREMELY IMPORTANT to set the right value - otherwise rate might
print completely irrevelant reports and output invalid IP addresses. The
default is autosense, or if that fails - 14 bytes, which is the length of
an Ethernet header.
- -q N
- Orders rate to quit after outputting N reports.
- -r N
- Time-based report generation policy. The reports will be dumped on stdout
every N seconds. This is the default (with N = 1).
- -s N
- Capture at least N bytes. For performance reasons, rate does not
acquire the whole packet from network, it just reads and processes first N
bytes. The default is 64 bytes, which might be not enough if you are using
complicated BPF expressions or filtering the packets using a regular
expression. In such cases, it is good to set the capture length to MTU on
the interface. The value is automatically increased to at least 1500
(which is the default MTU for an Ethernet interface) if one of -x, -E or
-T options is used. This option does NOT affect statistical data (amount
of bytes, per-second byte rate) collected by rate - the accounted packet
size is always the 'real' one.
- -S N
- Save the whole specified option set into a file in your home directory
(~/.rate.modes) under the name N. The option set might then be recalled
using the -L option.
- -v
- Print exact values. Normally, rate uses SI prefixes (like k - kilo,
M - mega, G - giga, T - tera) to make the printed numeric values more
attractive for a human being. The -v option disables this feature, causing
rate to print exact values.
- -w
- Clear the screen before printing each report. This assumes your terminal
is capable of understanding certain control sequences.
- -x r
- Regular expression-based filtering. This option will cause rate to
ignore packets that DO NOT match specified regular expression. Before any
tests, NUL characters occuring in a packet are replaced with an other
character, as specified in the -0 option (the default is '@'). Consult
regex(5) manual for a detailed description of POSIX regular
expressions. In addition to standard regex syntax, you may use the \r
(CR), \n (LF), \t (TAB), \\ (\) and \xNN (hex NN) special sequences.
These options are used to choose between one of the four operation modes. It is
necessary to specify exactly one of them. After specyfing a mode selecting
option, you may pass the mode-specific options described below, depending on
the selected mode. No generic options are allowed though - all the generic
ones have to be passed BEFORE the mode selecting option.
- -R
- Enable the rate estimation mode. See the RATE ESTIMATION MODE
section for details.
- -A
- Enable the "abusers detecion" mode. See the ABUSERS DETECTION
MODE section.
- -T
- Enable the stream analyzer mode. See the STREAM ANALYZER MODE
section.
- -E
- Enable the regular expression extractor mode. See the STRING EXTRACTING
MODE section.
rate [...] -R -h
rate [...] -R [-b] [bpf filter expression]
In this mode, rate just shows overall traffic generated by
packets matching the specified (generic) filtering options (-f, -x). The
reports in this mode are just one-line long:
=> Currently XXX Bps/YYY pps, Average: ZZZ Bps/TTT
pps
Where of course, XXX and YYY are the byte and packet per second
values, measured since the last report, while ZZZ and TTT are the rates
measured since the application started.
Available options:
- -b
- Use bit units. The output is to be presented in bits (b) rather than bytes
(B).
- -h
- Help. Dumps a short hint on mode-specific options available for this mode,
and forces rate to quit.
rate [...] -A -h
rate [...] -A [-a n] [-b] <-c c/p [-c c/p [-c c/p ...]]>
[-dflt] [-O | -M] [-P | -B] [-T | -R] [bpf filter expression]
This mode is designed for hunting network nodes that generate
highest traffic. An independent set of counters is allocated for every host
from every specified IP subnet. On a report event, a list of hosts is
composed, sorted by one of the counters (depending on OMPBTR sorting
options), and top entries (and values of their counters) are displayed on
stdout. Available options:
- -a N
- Print N top nodes.
- -b
- Use bit units. The output is to be presented in bits (b) rather than bytes
(B).
- -c C/P
- Consider nodes from this IP subnet. The network mask has to be specified
in 'short', CIDR notation, eg. 10.0.0.0/8.
- -d
- Alternative ("dump") output format. Instead of showing top N
nodes, rate will dump the whole host list in a form that can be
easily parsed by automated tools. The output format is:
- <host IP>:<overall input bytes #>:<overall output bytes
#>:<momentary input bytes #>:<momentary output bytes
#>:<overall packet input #>:<overall packet output
#>:<momentary packet input #>:<momentary packet output
#>
- -f
- Print spaces instead of "pipes" (|) as column separators.
Normally, rate will use characters imitating a vertical line ('|')
to separate columns in order to improve readability. This option disables
this feature.
- -l
- Account local transfers too. Rate will also account 'local'
transfers, ie. transfers between two hosts in IP classes specified with
-c option. By default, such transfers are ignored.
- -t
- Print total amount of transferred data instead of overall speed.
- -O
- Consider overall transfer rates while sorting the host list.
- -M
- Consider momentary transfer rates while sorting the host list
(default).
- -P
- Consider packet counters while sorting the host list.
- -B
- Consider byte counters while sorting the list (default).
- -T
- Consider output (TX) counters while sorting the list.
- -R
- Consider input (RX) counters while sorting the list (default).
rate [...] -T -h
rate [...] -T [-m <memlimit> [-f <free>]] [-rtv]
[-n <n> | -s <n> | -p <n>] [-R | -S] [-M | -O] [-B | -P]
[-A | -D] [-b]
In this mode, rate will try to keep track of every TCP
connection and UDP or ICMP stream present on the interface. Every detected
conversation is allocated its own set of traffic counters; besides,
rate attempts to identify common protocols (like HTTP or FTP). The
feature is still experimental, and consumes HUGE amounts of system
resources. Do not trust the -m and -f options, avoid leaving rate -T
somewhere in the background and without supervision.
The reports might be generated in three different ways:
- host-oriented reports
- a list of most active (or least active, depending on sorting options)
hosts is printed, with an optional list of conversations below every
entry.
- stream-oriented reports
- rate print an overall list of most/least active streams.
- protocol-oriented reports
- show the mostly utilized protocols, with an optional list of conversations
classified as a specific protocol below every entry.
Available options:
- -m M
- Limit memory used by the conversation engine to M kilobytes. When the
amount of allocated memory gets beyond the set limit, a number of least
active conversation is dropped. DO NOT trust this option.
- -f F
- Drop F conversations after a memory overlimit. Default: 4000.
- -r
- Output resource usage statistics (CPU, memory) before every report.
- -t
- Use tabs instead of spaces to separate columns.
- -v
- Increase verbosity level. This will print the guessed conversation
protocol below every printed conversation entry. Again, please keep on
mind that the stream analyzer feature is highly experimental, and it still
lacks ability to recognize many common protocols. Only the basic ones
(HTTP, FTP, FTP Data, POP3, SMTP) are supported for now. The remaining
streams are classified as "Unknown" and
"Unidentified".
- -n N
- Node-driven reports. Print a list of N most/least active nodes (and,
optionally, conversations associated with them)
- -s N
- Stream-driven reports. Print a list of N most/least active streams.
- -p N
- Protocol-driven reports. Output a list of N top protocols.
- -b
- Brief output. Supress the conversation lists - valid only for node and
protocol driven reports.
Sorting options:
- -R
- Consider received data counters. Makes sense only for node-driven reports.
This is the default.
- -S
- Consider sent data counters. As above, only for node-driven reports.
- -M
- Consider momentary counters (default).
- -O
- Consider overall counters.
- -B
- Consider byte counters (default).
- -P
- Consider packet counters.
- -D
- Descending sort - the most active hosts/nodes/protocols first. This is the
default.
- -A
- Ascending sort - the least active hosts/nodes/protocols first.
rate [...] -E -h
rate [...] -E [-o <output format string>] [-i] [-e]
<pattern>
This is a "bonus" mode - it has nothing to do with
traffic analysis. Unlike other operation modes, this one does not generate
reports. It is designed for extracting strings from packets - whenever a
matching packet occurs, the extracted string is printed to stdout,
regardless of the report generation policy.
pattern is a regular expression to be matched. Parts of the
expression encosed in escaped braces \( ... \) are printed to standard
output, in order they appear in the expression if a packet matches the
pattern. If the -o (output format) option was specified, the output
format string is printed instead, with \1 being substituted with the
first subexpression in pattern, \2 with the second, etc. The whole thing
works much like sed 's///'. A typical application would be investigating web
pages currently visited by users:
# rate -f 'dst port 80' -E -o 'Host: \2 Browser: \1' -ie
'User-Agent: \([^\r\n]+\)\r\n.*Host: \([^\r\n]+\)\r\n'
The -i option enables printing source and destination
addresses before each set of extracted strings. As you can see, it is
possible to use \n, \r, \t and \x in pattern, just like in the case
of the -x generic option.
To determine overall traffic on eth3:
- # rate -i eth3 -R
-
To estimate bandwidth consumed by WWW traffic on ppp0, bit
units:
- # rate -i ppp0 -f 'port 80' -Rb
-
To print top 20 nodes from 10.0.0.0/8 that are receiving the
highest number of bytes (including transfers between hosts inside the
10.0.0.0/8 network) every 5 seconds:
- # rate -i eth0 -r 5 -Aa 20 -lc 10.0.0.0/8
-
Same as above, but w/color output and screen clearing:
- # rate -i eth0 -r 5 -w -c -Aa 20 -lc 10.0.0.0/8
-
Show 10 nodes from 10.0.0.0/8 and 192.168.0.0/16 that generated
the largest overall number of packets, generate reports on a keypress
(RETURN), ANSI color output:
- # rate -i eth0 -ck -Ac 10.0.0.0/8 -c 192.168.0.0/16 -a 10 -OPT
-
Estimate ICMP traffic exchanged with the 10.0.0.0/8 subnet, wait
for SIGUSR1, then dump the counters for each host in 192.168.0.0/24 to a
file named FILE, then quit.
- # rate -i eth1 -f 'icmp and net 10.0.0.0/8' -q 1 -gl -A -c
192.168.0.0/24 -d > FILE
-
Show most active (considering transferred bytes) conversations
detected on eth3, color output on keypress; save the option set under the
name 'streams':
- # rate -S streams -i eth3 -ckTrs 25 -MB
-
Recall the 'streams' operation mode:
- # rate -L streams
-
On a keypress, show a list of 3 nodes that have sent the highest
amount of packets since the application started; color output:
- # rate -i eth3 -ckTrvn 3 -SOP
-
Show currently visited web pages:
- # rate -f 'dst port 80' -E -o 'Host: \2 Browser: \1' -ie 'User-Agent:
\([^\r\n]+\)\r\n.*Host: \([^\r\n]+\)\r\n'
-
View addresses e-mails are being sent from:
- # rate -i eth1 -f 'dst port 25' -E -ie 'MAIL FROM:
\([^\r\n]+\)'
-
The TRAFFIC ANALYZER (-T) operation mode is experimental. It consumes
large amounts of system resources. Memory leaks in code that provides this
feature are possible.
The commandline options are a bit complicated, but it seems it's
impossible to do anything about that.
tcpdump(1), regex(7), pcap(3), bpf(4)
Mateusz Golicz <mteg@jaszczur.org>
Feel free to send comments, suggestions, bug reports, etc. The
author is not a native english speaker, and is aware of the fact that his
english is far from perfect. Because of that, reports on grammar or
vocabulary mistakes in this manual are also welcome.
The asynchronous DNS resolver part was taken from mtr - a
very handy traceroute replacement by Matt Kimball.
Copyright 2003 Mateusz Golicz. All rights reserved.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License, Version 2, as
published by the Free Software Foundation. A copy of this license is
distributed with this software in the file "COPYING".
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Read the file
"COPYING" for more details.
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