Disclamer: the program is free of copyright but also free of any warranties
The coding is up to you.

> I have one question which seems to elude my efforts in finding an answer, is
> it possible to create a climbing graph
> that shows the TOTAL data that has passed across my ep0 (internet) interface
> ?
> 
There are a few minor problems with this.
If you would use the gauge option, you would need to reset the counter
every time you want to start monitoring (start of each month, every four
weeks or whatever similar). This will make MRTG believe a counter wrap has
occured and therefore you will get a huge delta (which will probably be
discarded) in your normal monitoring.

The only sensible[1] thing to do is to patch mrtg so that it delivers the
data measured (the deltas, not divided by time) to an external program.
This way you get to keep your current throughput measurements and don't
need extra polls to the device.

This extra program should just add up the deltas and write them to a file.
You can reset this file whenever you feel like it and read it out using
another mrtg[2] instance (which *is* using option gauge).

So, at the point where rateup is called:

   call rateup as usual
   rename "traffic.counters"  (some rudimental form of locking)
   read "traffic.counters.old"
   add deltain and deltaout (which should be saved somewhere)
   write "traffic.counters"   (new version)

Add some error checking code et voila... Should work; and no, I do
not have this program working.
Make sure you can handle the larger numbers involved (as in: do not
use normal integers)
the reset script could be as simple as...

   rename traffic.counters to traffic.counters.`date +%B`
   
...if you assume your extra program handles a missing traffic.counters
file as meaning zero.

Check your script by adding up the deltas in the mrtg log, they should
be approximately[3][4] the same as your results when multiplied with
the correct time. (data stored is (delta counter)/(delta time) so
you have to multiply by (delta time) to correct).

HTH,
Alex
[1] as always: IMHO
[2] or rrdtool, or /bin/view, or excel, whatever
[3] this spelling should be, approximately[3] correct[5]
[4] I guess mrtg will show slightly lower values due to rounding errors
[5] not only posting from .nl, also speaking .nl

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