Monitor MikroTik Internet Link Usage
Summary Internet Link turns each MikroTik WAN interface into a monitored source. Register the operator, contracted speeds, monthly cap, and billing-cycle reset day, and MKController shows live consumption, real-time speed, and latency — plus historical charts for latency, utilization ranges, and data volume. Data is collected every minute and rolled up hourly. No scripts, no external graphing server.
What Is Internet Link in MKController?
Internet Link is the bandwidth-and-quality monitor for the WAN connections behind your MikroTik routers. You tell MKController what each link should deliver — the operator, the contracted download/upload speed, the monthly data cap, and the day the billing cycle resets — and MKController continuously compares what the link actually delivers against those numbers.
The result is a single screen that answers the three questions every operator asks about a link: Is it saturated? Is it fast? Is it stable?
Why Does Internet Link Monitoring Matter?
A MikroTik router knows its interface counters, but it does not know your plan. It cannot tell you “this 500 Mbps link is running at 92% of contracted capacity” or “you have used 430 GB of your 500 GB cap this cycle,” because it has no concept of the contract.
Internet Link adds that business context:
- Catch saturation before customers call. When a link sits above 90% of contracted bandwidth for hours, that is your early warning to upsell capacity or rebalance traffic.
- Track usage against the cap. For metered links, knowing where you are in the billing cycle prevents overage surprises.
- Prove quality. Latency history (average, peak, and P95) is the evidence you need when a customer reports “the internet is slow.”
How Internet Link Works
The mechanism is simple and runs automatically once a source is configured:
- Collection (every minute). MKController polls the device and stores a raw sample: interface byte counters and the result of up to three ping tests.
- Hourly roll-up. A background engine processes those samples into one hourly record per interface — total bytes in/out, and the minute-level average, maximum, minimum, and P95 for both throughput and latency. This roll-up runs on a recurring 15-minute cycle.
- Live snapshot. The three live cards read the most recent sample directly, so “Current consumption,” “Current speed,” and “Current latency” reflect roughly the last minute — not the hourly average.
Getting Started: Add Your First Source
You can register up to four sources per device.
- In MKController, open the Devices menu, find the device, and click View More.
- Open the Internet Link section.
- Click Add source.
- Choose the Interface from the dropdown. The list is loaded live from the device, so only real interfaces appear.
- Enter the Operator name — for example, Vivo, Claro, or TIM. This is how the source is labeled across the dashboard.
- Set the Download speed and Upload speed in Mbps, matching your contracted plan. These are the baselines every utilization percentage is measured against.
- Set the Bandwidth limit in GiB, or tick Unlimited if the plan has no cap.
- Set the Billing cycle reset day (a day from 1 to 28) — the day of the month your operator resets usage.
- Click Create source.
The dashboard populates as soon as the first samples are collected. To change a plan later, use the edit (pencil) action in the Data Sources table; to stop monitoring a link, use the remove (trash) action.
The Data Sources Table
The table at the top of the screen lists every configured source and its plan.
What it shows — one row per source with six columns:
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Interface | The MikroTik interface being monitored (e.g. ether1). |
| Operator | The label you entered (the ISP / carrier name). |
| Data Usage | Total volume transferred on this source over the currently selected period (see the Period selector), shown in human-readable units. |
| Download speed | Contracted download speed, in Mbps. |
| Upload speed | Contracted upload speed, in Mbps. |
| Bandwidth limit | Monthly cap in GiB, or Unlimited. |
How it’s calculated — Interface, Operator, speeds, and limit are the values you entered when creating the source. Data Usage is the sum of all download + upload bytes recorded for that source across the selected period, then formatted into B / KB / MB / GB.
Daily example — A source labeled Vivo on ether1, plan 500 Mbps / 100 Mbps, Unlimited, currently shows 142.66 GB of Data Usage for the last 30 days.
Current Status: Billing Cycle
Above the live cards, a single bar summarizes where this connection sits in its billing cycle.
What it shows — the plan position in plain language: how far into the cycle you are (“Day 10 of 31”), when it resets, and — for capped plans — a usage bar comparing consumption to the monthly limit.
How it’s calculated — The reset day you configured (1–28) defines the cycle. If today is on or after the reset day, the cycle started on that day this month; otherwise it started on that day last month. The next reset is exactly one month after the start, and “Day X of N” is the elapsed days within that window. For capped plans, the usage bar fills with the usage for the currently selected period measured against the monthly cap, capped at 100%. The bar turns amber at 75% and red at 90%.
Daily example — A capped plan of 500 GB with reset day 1: on the 10th of a 31-day month the bar reads “Day 10 of 31 · resets 1 Jul”, with the fill reflecting usage in the selected period against the 500 GB cap.
Live Cards
Three cards give the at-a-glance health of the link, each refreshed from the most recent sample (roughly the last minute).
Current Consumption
What it shows — How much of your contracted bandwidth is in use right now, as a percentage donut, with the download and upload shares listed separately and a status badge (Moderate / Elevated / Critical).
How it’s calculated — For each direction, MKController compares the link’s current throughput against the contracted speed for that direction and expresses it as a percentage. The headline figure is the higher of the download and upload percentages, capped at 100%. The badge is driven by that percentage: Moderate below 75%, Elevated at 75–89%, Critical at 90% and above.
Daily example — A 500 / 100 Mbps link at a busy hour shows 61.80% Download, 24.10% Upload, so the donut reads 62% with an Elevated badge — a signal that download capacity is filling but not yet critical.
Current Speed
What it shows — The actual throughput moving across the link right now, split into Download and Upload.
How it’s calculated — The byte counters from the latest sample are converted to a per-second rate and shown in human-readable units (KB, MB, GB per second).
Daily example — During an evening peak the card reads Download 7.50 MB and Upload 1.20 MB — i.e. about 7.5 MB/s down and 1.2 MB/s up at that moment.
Current Latency
What it shows — The round-trip response time of the link in milliseconds, averaged over the last sample, with a quality badge.
How it’s calculated — Each sample runs up to three ping tests; their results are averaged into one value displayed as “n ms.” The badge thresholds are: Good at 50 ms or below, High at 51–100 ms, Critical above 100 ms.
Daily example — Ping tests return 14 ms, 16 ms, and 18 ms; the card shows 16 ms with a Good badge.
Performance Over Time
Below the live snapshot, the historical section visualizes trends. Two selectors scope everything in this section:
- Interface — pick which configured source the charts describe.
- Period — 24 hours, 7 days, or 30 days.
Each point on these charts represents one hour.
Latency Chart (Avg / Max / Min / P95)
What it shows — Four lines of round-trip latency over the selected period: the hourly Average, Max, Min, and P95 (the value 95% of samples stay below).
How it’s calculated — Within each hour, MKController collects every minute’s ping average and derives: Average = the mean of those values; Max / Min = the highest / lowest; P95 = the value at the 95th percentile of the sorted samples.
Daily example — Over 24 hours a healthy link shows Average ≈ 18 ms, Min 9 ms, P95 95 ms, and a single Max 140 ms spike — telling you the link is usually excellent, with one brief congestion event.
Bandwidth Usage Ranges
What it shows — How much of the period the link spent in each utilization band: Below 75%, Between 75% and 90%, Between 90% and 95%, and Above 95%. A toggle switches the basis between Average, Max, Min, and P95.
How it’s calculated — For every hour in the period, MKController takes the selected utilization metric (e.g. the hourly Average %) and sorts the hour into one of the four bands. Each band’s value is its share of all hours, expressed as a percentage that totals 100%.
Daily example — Over a 24-hour window (24 hourly points) using the Average basis: 18 hours below 75%, 4 hours at 75–90%, 1 hour at 90–95%, and 1 hour above 95% → 75% / 17% / 4% / 4%. Most of the day is comfortable, but a couple of hours push the link hard.
Internet Consumption (%) Chart
What it shows — The same Avg / Max / Min / P95 utilization, plotted as a time series of percentages, with reference lines drawn at 75% and 90% so saturation jumps out visually.
How it’s calculated — Identical to the utilization figures behind the Bandwidth Usage Ranges: per hour, throughput versus contracted speed, taking the higher of download and upload and capping at 100%. Hovering a point also reveals how many minutes that hour ran over 80% of contracted bandwidth.
Daily example — The Average line hovers around 40% all afternoon, then the Max line touches the 90% guide line at 20:00 with a tooltip reading “12 min over 80%” — a clear, datable congestion window.
Data Usage Chart
What it shows — The volume of Download and Upload traffic over time, with period totals and each direction’s share shown inline above the chart.
How it’s calculated — For short windows the chart plots per-minute deltas; for longer periods it plots each hour’s total download and upload bytes. The inline totals sum each direction over the period, and the percentages are each direction’s share of the combined total.
Daily example — Over 30 days the source totals Download 142.66 GB (84%) and Upload 27.18 GB (16%) — a typical download-heavy traffic profile.
Limitations and Good to Know
- Live metrics target the primary WAN (
ether1). Live consumption, speed, latency, and the per-hour Max/Min/P95/over-80 quality metrics are computed for the primary interface. Other configured sources still track total data volume. - Live vs. historical timing. The live cards read the latest sample (~1 minute); the charts read hourly roll-ups, which lag by up to the 15-minute aggregation cycle.
- Up to four sources per device.
- Reset day range is 1–28, so every month has a valid reset date.
Conclusion
Internet Link gives every MikroTik WAN the context its own counters lack: a contract to measure against. Saturation, speed, latency, and data volume become numbers you can act on and share — “the link is fine” becomes “here’s the utilization, here’s the P95 latency, here’s where the cap stands.”
- Saturation visibility — know when a link is filling before customers feel it.
- Quality evidence — latency history including P95, not just a live ping.
- Usage clarity — data volume tracked against the plan and the billing cycle.
To get alerted the moment a monitored device drops offline, pair this with Telegram Alerts. To track uptime alongside throughput, see Availability Monitoring.
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