Bills
The cost half: every bill, in whatever form it arrives, read and checked.
What each link costs, and what it carries
Riopex measures a link three ways: from the device, from your monitoring system, or from the reports you upload. Each link's chart draws its committed rate against hourly traffic, and a missed hour shows as a gap.
Monitoring
Three ways to read a link
Each monitoring connection uses the system's own measure of how much of each hour it measured, so coverage stays honest whatever the source.
- From the device
- Riopex polls devices directly over SNMP v3. The poller runs inside your own network and needs no inbound connection.
- From your monitoring system
- Riopex reads utilisation history from the system you already run: PRTG, Zabbix, SolarWinds, LibreNMS, ManageEngine OpManager, Cisco Meraki and Fortinet FortiAnalyzer.
- From an upload
- History exported from PRTG or Zabbix can be uploaded instead of connected.
- What it reads
- Traffic counters, and only from interfaces bound to a service.
- What it changes
- Nothing. Riopex asks a monitoring system for a read-only key and never writes to a device.
Coverage
Every hour counted as it was measured
Coverage is measured against every hour of the month, so a link bound partway through never reads as fully covered.
One reading an hour
Every interface gets one reading per hour.
Missing stays missing
An hour not measured stays missing, never zero.
Part of an hour
A partly measured hour counts as only part of an hour of coverage.
Resets discarded
A device reboot or counter reset is discarded, never counted as traffic.
From the bills
What each megabit costs, across the group
The Overview compares each data link’s cost per megabit of its committed speed across the group. The cost comes from the bills, so the figure is there whether or not monitoring is connected.
- Recurring charges and discounts, netted, to a month
- Usage, one-off fees and taxes left out
- An unclassified charge kept and sent to review
From monitoring
What each delivered megabit costs
Cost per megabit delivered sets the same cost against what the link carried.
- The measure
- Each month's p95 is taken over its measured hours, inbound, outbound and both ways.
- The figure
- Cost per Mbps delivered is worked out from the month's p95, and only when enough of the month was measured.
- New readings
- When new measurements roll up into a month, its cost per Mbps is worked out again.
- Longer windows
- Over a longer window, a link's utilisation is its busiest month.
- Comparison
- Cost per Mbps delivered is compared across the group's companies, sites and providers, and stays inside the group.
By role
How hard each link works, by its role
A link that runs well below its committed rate over a full billing period opens a low-utilisation finding only when its role, contract, monitoring coverage and billing history all allow it.
- Held back for a backup, burst or seasonal link
- Held back on thin monitoring or a short window
- Held back under a contractual minimum
Connecting
How a link comes under measurement
A connection guide lets your network team connect its monitoring on its own.
An interface meets its service
An interface binds itself only when its alias or name exactly matches one confirmed link identifier. Any other opens a task for a person to bind it to its service.
An upload joins by its identifier
An uploaded series joins a service only when its identifier matches exactly.
Coverage is watched
The coverage view lists every link with its source and coverage, and names the links that have gone quiet.
Uploads keep their cadence
Each uploaded report has an expected cadence, set for the company or for each monitoring connection. The coverage view says whether it is on time or overdue.
A gap opens a task
A link whose role or coverage is unknown opens a data-quality task, so the gap is fixed rather than hidden.
Precedence
One month, one record
Rebinding an interface never rewrites measured history.
| Aspect | An uploaded month | A measured month |
|---|---|---|
| When both cover a month | Stands until a measured month has observed at least as many hours | Replaces the upload once it has observed at least as many hours |
| When live monitoring measured it | Never replaces it | Stays as measured |
| Its resolution | Refused when coarser than an hour | One reading per interface per hour |
| How it joins a service | Only when its identifier matches exactly | Through the interface bound to the service |
Questions
Questions about bandwidth
What happens when our monitoring misses an hour?
The hour stays missing, never zero, and the link's chart shows it as a gap. A partly measured hour counts as only part of an hour of coverage.
Can we upload history instead of connecting?
Yes. History exported from PRTG or Zabbix can be uploaded instead of connected.
Readings coarser than an hour are refused, and an uploaded series joins a service only when its identifier matches exactly.
Does Riopex need a way into our network?
For SNMP, the poller runs inside your own network and needs no inbound connection.
A connection to a monitoring system reaches only an address a person has configured.
Will polling load our monitoring server?
Riopex paces its calls to PRTG, so polling never overloads your monitoring server.
Who connects our monitoring?
Your network team, on its own, with the connection guide.
What is a link's utilisation over several months?
Over a longer window, a link's utilisation is its busiest month.
Related
The two halves of the figure
Integrations
The traffic half: the device, your monitoring system or the history you upload.
Cost per megabit delivered
What goes into the figure's numerator, and why its percentile is named for its bucket.
See what each megabit costs
The subscribed figure needs only the bills; the delivered one follows once enough of the month is measured. Three invoices from one company are enough to start.
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