Usage Statistics

[PSUAviator]

I've become interested in gathering usage statistics for my SageTV installation. I have several clients in the house (MVPs and PCs). System details are at the end of this post.

I'd like to gather usage statistics on a per-client basis. Since I only care about usage amount (not content), this should consist of bytes to/from each client, at a minimum. More details would be nice, but not totally necessary. Some examples: Which show is being watched; whether the client is left connected to the server and idle for an extended period; whether the client has toggled watched/do-not-like/favorite.

The very basic monitoring can be accomplished by a packet-sniffer (like Ethereal)... but full-time monitoring might hog too many system resources...Especially since packet-sniffers are geared toward capturing data in the packet, not simply gathering byte totals. It's also possible to telnet in to the MVPs and run the ifconfig and uptime commands (to get an idea for the usage rate). Unfortunately, this information is lost if somebody needs to perform a hard-reset of the MVP.

I would like to accomplish this within the SageTV Server. Is someting like this possible within the .STV framework? I have never delved into STV development, so this is why I pose the question. Thanks for your responses.


Setup details: My SageTV system consists of the server, 4 MediaMVPs and 2 PCs with the Client installed. There are 3 household members, so we only bother with 3 licenses. Usually, one is used. Often two. Three: rarely.