Monitoring Motorola Canopy with Windows XP and MRTG
by dNight (d_night@comcast.net)
This is aimed at either someone who works for a WISP, ISP, or who just wants to learn a little something about monitoring the Motorola Canopy equipment using XP instead of Linux.
This has been tested on the 5.7 GHz equipment. Motorola has set up their Canopy equipment to allow anyone to monitor the equipment from anywhere [ip(0.0.0.0)].
This leaves the Canopy equipment open to traffic monitoring by anyone who has the ability to setup Multi Router Traffic Grapher (MRTG). There are numerous other options that you can monitor besides traffic but needless to say traffic is the only one I'll show how to monitor in this article. At present Motorola only supports their expensive monitoring equipment call Bandwidth Allocation Manager (BAM), thus the need for a free solution.
You need to first have access to a Windows XP machine.
Next get MRTG from oss.oetiker.ch/mrtg/download.en.html. You'll want the latest release which is mrtg-2.14.5 as of this writing.
You'll also need to download ActivePerl from www.activestate.com/products/?id=ActivePerl.
Finally you'll need Net-SNMP from net-snmp.sourceforge.io/.
I won't go into detail on how to install the latter two as there is documentation on the corresponding websites. Also, if you'd like to view the graphs remotely, set up Apache or IIS to serve these files.
Once you've downloaded MRTG create the folder C:\MRTG and then unzip MRTG to C:\MRTG\DATA.
This is where your config files will go.
Next create the folder C:\MRTG\GRAPHS which is where the traffic graphs will go. Now we need to set up a config file that will be used to request data from the Canopy equipment.
Below is an example of a file you will use. I'm using 192.168.0.55 as the address that the Canopy would be located at:
In order to use this file you should save it in the MRTG data folder as IPADDRESS.cfg.
WorkDir is essential and only used once at the top of the file.
You can change anything between [ ... ] to be any name you want. I simply put the IP address as a way to keep it consistent.
The Target is what you want to monitor. 1 is for traffic, Canopy is the default community string, and :::::2 is to force SNMPv2 as it will not work with SNMPv1.
The MaxBytes is currently set to monitor download and upload speeds up to one megabyte.
The Directory is where you want the graphs stored. As of this writing I had the config files stored in the same directory as the graphs, which I don't recommend if you're running this on an open web server.
The rest is just for visuals on the graphs.
Next we'll need to schedule a batch file to run the config file.
Scheduling the Batch File
If your XP machine doesn't have any username with a password you will have to create an account with a password, or password protect the account you are currently using.
First create the batch file with the information below and put it in: C:\MRTG\DATA\BIN
Next go to "Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Scheduled Tasks".
Double-click "Add Scheduled Task" and it will bring up a wizard that you will use to schedule the batch file to run every five minutes for 24 hours.
Click "Next" on the first screen and then click "Browse" on the following screen and browse to the batch file you created in C:\MRTG\DATA\BIN.
Next select to perform the task daily, schedule the time at 12:00 pm, click "Next", enter your account information and password for XP or the one you just created. Click "Next", then check the box "Open advanced properties for this task when I click Finish" and then click "Finish".
When the new box comes up select the "Schedule" tab and click on "Advanced".
Check "Repeat Task", change it to every five minutes with a duration of 24 hours and click "O.K.". Click "O.K." on the next screen and you should now be graphing the Motorola Canopy of your choice!
There is a support board at motorola.canopywireless.com/support/community where you can get more information about the Motorola Canopy equipment.
With thanks to many people from the Motorola message board and from across the Internet, I was able to get this functioning and am happily sharing the information I've acquired with 2600.