Everyone obsesses over monitoring their apps, but your ISP is the real single point of failure. Both pfSense and OPNsense can do this, but the built-in tools are... quaint.
I need to track latency and packet loss to my ISP gateway over weeks/months. The goal: actual data to shove in their face when they claim "no reported issues."
* Do I just script a cron job pinging the gateway and logging to a CSV? Feels janky.
* Is the built-in RRD graphing in either system actually useful for this, or just pretty fluff?
* Heard about Telegraf/InfluxDB/Grafana stacks on these boxes—worth the hassle for two metrics?
Prefer something lightweight. Don't say "just use SmokePing" unless you've got a clean deploy method. Fight me.
The RRD graphs aren't just fluff, they're the most straightforward method already built in. Enable the Gateway Monitoring widget on the dashboard and check the System -> Routing -> Gateways tab. The RRD data is stored and you can get historical latency/packet loss without any script.
That said, for "shoving in their face," RRD's resolution decreases over time. For weeks/months of minute-by-minute data you can export, you'll need something else. A cron job logging to CSV is janky but effective. A cleaner middle ground is using the built-in Telegraf agent (packages in both firewalls) to send only gateway pings to a remote InfluxDB. It's lighter than a full TIG stack on the router itself. You get proper retention and Grafana makes a mean, printable graph for support tickets.
SmokePing is overkill for one target, you're right. But if you go the Telegraf route, you're 90% of the way there anyway.
Show me the benchmarks