Exporting Statistical Data from a URL

Products

• PacketShaper

Issue/Introduction

PacketShaper can respond to HTTP queries in order to export historical data. This allows external programs to retrieve data from it relatively easily for reporting, billing, or other applications.

Resolution

PacketShaper can respond to HTTP queries in order to export historical data. This allows external programs to retrieve data from it relatively easily for reporting, billing, or other applications.  For example, sending the following URL request to the PacketShaper will return responses in the format shown. This particular URL returns data on the Average Bandwidth Utilization and the percentage of Early TCP Retransmits that occurred for the class /Inbound/Outside/POP3 over the last hour. Over 20 different historical variables are available for each class and two months of historical data is available.

-----------------Sample URL-----------------

http://10.2.0.2/Cgi?MEAS.TYPE=class&MEAS.PERIOD=3600&MEAS.INTERVAL=60&MEAS.CHILDREN=0&MEAS.SORT=0&MEAS.FORMAT=time&MEAS.NAME=\%2FInbound\%2FOutside\%2FPOP3&MEAS.VARLIST=avg-bps+tcp-early-retx-toss-pkts\%25+&MEAS.MIMETYPE=text\%2Fplain&varsList=&varsList=&sortSel=&periodSel=set&periodCnt=1&periodUnit=3600&formatSel=time&intervalSel=60&OP.MEAS.GETDATA=Fetch+data

----------------Sample Output-----------------

"class:/Inbound/Outside/POP3" "time","avg-bps","tcp-early-retx-toss-pkts"

"04-Jan-1999 20:40:23",0,0

"04-Jan-1999 20:39:23",0,0

"04-Jan-1999 20:38:23",274,0

"04-Jan-1999 20:37:23",1445,0

"04-Jan-1999 20:36:23",1833,0

"04-Jan-1999 20:35:23",3234,0

"04-Jan-1999 20:34:23",789,0

"04-Jan-1999 20:33:23",2248,0

"04-Jan-1999 20:32:23",1654,0

"04-Jan-1999 20:31:23",1,0

"04-Jan-1999 20:30:23",1,0

"04-Jan-1999 20:29:23",4,0

"04-Jan-1999 20:28:23",1,0

"04-Jan-1999 20:27:23",7,0

"04-Jan-1999 20:26:23",0,0

"04-Jan-1999 20:25:23",15,0

"04-Jan-1999 20:24:23",18,0

"04-Jan-1999 20:23:23",0,0

The easiest way to derive the information for the request URL is to do a query manually by using the "Data" button from the PacketShaper's Web Interface. Once the data is showing on the screen, click on that frame and then select Properties from the File Menu (IE4) or Frame Info from the View Menu (Netscape) to see the URL, which generated it.

This URL can be saved as a bookmark. If you want to automate the process, numerous scripting systems are available, such as DDE, OLE, Visual Basic, Excel macros, Perl, and Win Batch which can automatically invoke a web browser, request the URL, and then save the results to disk. Almost all programming languages, such as Visual Basic, Perl, Python, C++, and Power Builder have HTTP libraries available which let them make HTTP calls directly. A wide variety of ActiveX controls and Java Classes are also available which can issue direct HTTP requests and can be called from other programs such as SQL 4GLs or JavaScript. And, for this purpose, HTTP is really nothing more than a well-defined instance of Telnet, so a language with scriptable telnet capability could telnet to the PacketShaper on Port 80 and issue the HTTP commands to retrieve the data. So, as you can see, quite a wide variety of tools are available which should be able to do the job.

Do remember that the PacketShaper uses standard MD5 encryption to protect it's password, so you will need a library which supports MD5 Authentication over HTTP. (Almost all up-to-date libraries and programming languages do since encrypting passwords is a very standard HTTP procedure. IE and Netscape also do this via the "remember my password" checkbox on the login screen.)

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