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Overview

Nekotopia operates a comprehensive monitoring infrastructure to ensure service reliability, performance optimisation, and proactive issue detection. Our telemetry stack is built on industry-standard open-source tools, providing real-time visibility into network health and VPN service performance.

Monitoring Stack

Core Components

Component Purpose Description
Prometheus Metrics Database Time-series collection and storage with powerful query language (PromQL)
Grafana Visualisation Dashboards, alerting, and data exploration
MKTXP MikroTik Exporter Exports RouterOS metrics (interfaces, queues, firewall, wireless)
Node Exporter Host Metrics CPU, memory, disk, network stats from Linux servers
cAdvisor Container Metrics Docker container resource usage and performance
pmacct Flow Analysis NetFlow/IPFIX traffic accounting and analysis

Architecture

The monitoring system follows a pull-based collection model with centralised storage and visualisation.

Data Collection Flow

1. Data Sources generate metrics:

  • MikroTik Router (network stats, queues, firewall)
  • Linux Hosts (system resources)
  • Docker Containers (application metrics)

2. Exporters expose metrics in Prometheus format:

  • MKTXP → MikroTik metrics on :9436
  • Node Exporter → Host metrics on :9100
  • cAdvisor → Container metrics on :8080

3. Prometheus scrapes all exporters every 15 seconds and stores 30 days of time-series data.

4. Grafana queries Prometheus and displays dashboards for operators.

Visual Flow

╔═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║                        DATA SOURCES                               ║
╠═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╣
║                                                                   ║
║   ┌─────────────┐    ┌─────────────┐    ┌─────────────┐          ║
║   │  MikroTik   │    │   Linux     │    │   Docker    │          ║
║   │   Router    │    │   Hosts     │    │ Containers  │          ║
║   └──────┬──────┘    └──────┬──────┘    └──────┬──────┘          ║
║          │                  │                  │                 ║
║          ▼                  ▼                  ▼                 ║
║   ┌─────────────┐    ┌─────────────┐    ┌─────────────┐          ║
║   │    MKTXP    │    │    Node     │    │  cAdvisor   │          ║
║   │  :9436      │    │  :9100      │    │  :8080      │          ║
║   └──────┬──────┘    └──────┬──────┘    └──────┬──────┘          ║
╚══════════╪══════════════════╪══════════════════╪══════════════════╝
           │                  │                  │
           └──────────────────┼──────────────────┘
                              │
                              ▼
              ╔═══════════════════════════════╗
              ║        PROMETHEUS             ║
              ║      (Metrics Database)       ║
              ║                               ║
              ║  • Scrapes every 15 sec       ║
              ║  • 30 day retention           ║
              ║  • Alerting rules             ║
              ╚═══════════════╤═══════════════╝
                              │
                              ▼
              ╔═══════════════════════════════╗
              ║          GRAFANA              ║
              ║        (Dashboards)           ║
              ║                               ║
              ║  • VPN Statistics             ║
              ║  • Bandwidth Graphs           ║
              ║  • System Health              ║
              ╚═══════════════════════════════╝

NetFlow Traffic Analysis

For detailed traffic analysis, NetFlow data follows a separate path:

┌─────────────┐         ┌─────────────┐         ┌─────────────┐
│  MikroTik   │ NetFlow │   pmacct    │ metrics │ Prometheus  │
│   Router    │ ──────▶ │  Collector  │ ──────▶ │             │
│             │   v9    │             │         │             │
└─────────────┘         └──────┬──────┘         └─────────────┘
                               │
                               ▼
                        ┌─────────────┐
                        │   Grafana   │
                        │  Traffic    │
                        │  Analysis   │
                        └─────────────┘

Key Metrics Collected

Network Metrics

Metric Description
Interface Throughput Bytes in/out per interface
Packet Rates Packets per second, errors, drops
Queue Statistics Per-user bandwidth enforcement
Firewall Counters Rule hit counts, blocked connections
WireGuard Peers Handshake status, data transfer

System Metrics

Metric Description
CPU/Memory Server and router resource usage
Disk I/O Storage performance
Container Health Docker service status
Process Monitoring Critical service uptime

Traffic Analysis

Metric Description
Flow Records Source/destination IP, ports, protocols
User Bandwidth Per-VPN-peer traffic accounting
Top Talkers Highest bandwidth consumers
Protocol Distribution Traffic breakdown by application

Access

Grafana dashboards are available to administrators at the internal monitoring endpoint. User-facing statistics are exposed through the Nekotopia dashboard where appropriate.

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