How can I monitor my bandwidth usage?

[absolute beginner]

Bump

Does any one have any good recommendations. I want to chek the bandwith I am being charged for is correct. My intention is to mirror all traffic on the network to the port my Kubuntu machine is connected to. It would be nice if I could see hourly traffic summaries and drill down to see the IP address that traffice went to and from.

[whatthefunk]

Check out Knemo. Its in the repositories.

[Shabakthanai]

You might try the widget, "Network Monitor", it gives you real-time upload and download rates. That would at least let you know how fast you might expect a download to arrive. It doesn't sound like it answers your question accurately, but may provide a solution for you if you are concerned by available download speed, keeping in mind that if the host is providing a slow rate, having a lot of bandwidth doesn't really make much difference. I like the widget and keep it on my desktop. If I am downloading at 1000 to 1500 Kbs, download will finish soon, nonetheless, if download speed is 60 Kbs, even a small download will take a while. I believe that most Internet speed, or lack of it, is controlled by the host server or site activity. Of course you can check download and upload rate at Speedtest.net. That will give you your Internet download and upload speed at the moment of the test. I don't know if this will be helpful for you; hope so. Cheers!

[oshunluvr]

Sounds like you want sysstat and sar if you need real and accurate data. I have no idea how to use them properly, but I bet a few web searches will help.

[oshunluvr]

Try:

sar -n DEV 1 1

[absolute beginner]

You might try the widget, "Network Monitor", it gives you real-time upload and download rates. That would at least let you know how fast you might expect a download to arrive. It doesn't sound like it answers your question accurately, but may provide a solution for you if you are concerned by available download speed, keeping in mind that if the host is providing a slow rate, having a lot of bandwidth doesn't really make much difference. I like the widget and keep it on my desktop. If I am downloading at 1000 to 1500 Kbs, download will finish soon, nonetheless, if download speed is 60 Kbs, even a small download will take a while. I believe that most Internet speed, or lack of it, is controlled by the host server or site activity. Of course you can check download and upload rate at Speedtest.net. That will give you your Internet download and upload speed at the moment of the test. I don't know if this will be helpful for you; hope so. Cheers!

Thanks but I am not concerned with monitoring bandwidth (speed). I have a service contract with my Internet provider (Vodaphone) that gives me 80 Gb of data a month. They charge me extra if I exceed this. I am a light user but regularly exceed this. They refuse to supply me logs to check (unbelievably citing privacy concerns). So I want something that I can check my data usage with so that I know if they are correctly measuring my data rate.

[oshunluvr]

BTW: A simple ifconfig should show the amount of data transfered through all your network connections. Amount given in bytes since up I believe.

[whatthefunk]

Thanks but I am not concerned with monitoring bandwidth (speed). I have a service contract with my Internet provider (Vodaphone) that gives me 80 Gb of data a month. They charge me extra if I exceed this. I am a light user but regularly exceed this. They refuse to supply me logs to check (unbelievably citing privacy concerns). So I want something that I can check my data usage with so that I know if they are correctly measuring my data rate.

I have a similar situation and use Knemo, like I mentioned above. It shows an icon in your taskbar and when you click it you get a report like this:


Notice that it gives you daily, monthly and yearly usage reports so you can stay within your limits.

[jlittle]

... service contract... 80 Gb of data a month... but regularly exceed this

Are you sure someone is not leaching your service? 80 GB is many times what I would think a "light user" would use in month. Do have a wireless router on the line, and is it secured?
Please forgive me if I'm stating the obvious unnecessarily. Exceeding 80 GB = teenager is my prejudice.
Regards, John Little

[Detonate]

A thread I started that received a lot of comments you might find informative.
http://www.kubuntuforums.net/showthr...ight=bandwidth