rate(1)rate(1)NAMErate - Swiss-Army-knife traffic analyzer
SYNOPSISrate [generic options] <-R | -A | -T | -E> [mode-specific options]
rate-L <name>
rate [-h | -?]
rate [mode select option] [-h | -?]
DESCRIPTION
Rate helps an administrator to figure out what is happening in his net‐
work 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), deter‐
mining 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).
USAGE
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 opera‐
tion 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.
GENERIC OPTIONS-0 c Replace every NUL character (ASCII 0) with c before doing regu‐
lar expression based filtering. Ignored if the -x option was not
specified. The default is '@'.
-c Color (ANSI-compatible) output in modes that support it (cur‐
rently: 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 expres‐
sion. For a detailed description of BPF filter expressions syn‐
tax, 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 spec‐
ify 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 pro‐
cesses first N bytes. The default is 64 bytes, which might be
not enough if you are using complicated BPF expressions or fil‐
tering 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 expres‐
sion. 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 stan‐
dard regex syntax, you may use the \r (CR), \n (LF), \t (TAB),
\\ (\) and \xNN (hex NN) special sequences.
MODE SELECTING OPTIONS
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 ESTIMATION MODErate [...] -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 mea‐
sured 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.
ABUSERS DETECTION MODErate [...] -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. Nor‐
mally, 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 speci‐
fied 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).
STREAM ANALYZER MODErate [...] -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 conversa‐
tion 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 conversa‐
tions 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 conversa‐
tion 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 com‐
mon protocols. Only the basic ones (HTTP, FTP, FTP Data, POP3,
SMTP) are supported for now. The remaining streams are classi‐
fied 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.
STRING EXTRACTING MODErate [...] -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 subexpres‐
sion 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.
EXAMPLES
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: \([^\r\n]+\)'
BUGS AND LIMITATIONS
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 impos‐
sible to do anything about that.
SEE ALSOtcpdump(1), regex(7), pcap(3), bpf(4)AUTHOR
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 eng‐
lish is far from perfect. Because of that, reports on grammar or vocab‐
ulary mistakes in this manual are also welcome.
The asynchronous DNS resolver part was taken from mtr - a very handy
traceroute replacement by Matt Kimball.
LICENSE
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 pub‐
lished by the Free Software Foundation. A copy of this license is dis‐
tributed 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 MER‐
CHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Read the file "COPY‐
ING" for more details.
11-August-2003 rate(1)
