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Routerstats is an ADSL router monitoring program for Windows. It displays continuously updated graphs of up/down noise margins and connection speeds, and also provides a means of adding user-defined graphs for displaying any other data which is available from the router interface. In addition, for more advanced users, a telnet interface can be configured to provide much more detailed information than is available from the router's web interface.

This is an invaluable tool for diagnosing various ADSL connection problems. In particular, the shape of the noise margin graph can be a good indicator of the cause of a problem. A jittery appearance like the example shown on the Routerstats download page suggests a generally rather noisy line; a roughly level shape punctuated by occasional downward spikes suggests an intermittent interference effect such as a misbehaving thermostat; and a succession of sharp downward spikes indicates the presence of Repetitive Electrical Impulse Noise (REIN).

Routerstats can be downloaded from the Routerstats web site, and full information about configuring it is available from the help pages.


Routerstats-Lite is a cut-down alternative to the full Routerstats program. It is lighter on resources and largely plug and play for its long list of supported routers. It provides just two graphs - downstream noise margin and downstream connection speed. For many diagnostic purposes this is all that is needed.

Routerstats-Lite can be downloaded from the Routerstats web site. There is no comprehensive online help (which is really not needed) but there is a single page of help.

How to run Routerstats in Linux

Routerstats and Routerstats-Lite are Windows programs, but they can be run in Linux systems with the help of Wine. Routerstats-Lite should run with no problems, but on some Linux systems the full Routerstats program may have some limitations. I have found on my systems that its telnet functions don't work correctly and tend to lock up.

If Wine isn't already installed you will first have to install it. All the mainstream distros will have Wine in their software repositories, so use the distro's package manager to install it. After installing it, run the following command as an ordinary user:


This sets up a basic Wine configuration for this user and opens a configuration dialog. You can look at the various tabs and edit things if you wish (and know what you're doing), otherwise just click OK.

Now download the version of Routerstats which you want to use. The lite version offers two different types of download, but I suggest that you download the zipped version, which requires no actual installation. Create a directory called 'routerstats' in your home directory, and copy the downloaded file to it. Open a console, cd to the 'routerstats' directory, and type:

unzip *.zip

which will extract the files from the archive.

Now, while still in that directory, type

wine RouterStats.exe


wine RouterStatsLite.exe

depending on which version you have. Routerstats should run, and you can click the help button to get any instructions you need (or read it here if you have difficulty getting the help button to work.

Adding a menu entry

How you actually do this depends on which desktop system you are using. KDE provides its own menu editor, but for Gnome you have to obtain a third party utility called 'alacarte'. Whichever system you are using, the command to run Routerstats will be:

wine /home/username/routerstats/RouterStats.exe  [or RouterStatsLite.exe]

(replacing 'username' with the actual user login name). You should now be able to run Routerstats from the menu.

--Roseway 14:16, 27 December 2011 (GMT)