Learn more about your network connection status with iftop, nethogs, and vnstat

Discover how to monitor your network connection with powerful Linux tools like iftop, nethogs, and vnstat. These utilities offer detailed insights into your network activity, helping you understand which processes are using your bandwidth and how traffic is distributed across your system.

Iftop is a real-time network monitoring tool that provides a top-like interface for observing network traffic. It can track connections by process ID and display bandwidth usage in a clear format. Nethogs, on the other hand, focuses on identifying which applications are consuming the most data, making it easy to spot bandwidth hogs. Vnstat works in the background as a lightweight daemon, tracking your network usage over time and offering historical data for analysis.

Iftop is particularly useful for detecting network congestion and understanding traffic patterns. To run it, you'll need root privileges:

$ sudo iftop

If you have multiple network interfaces, specify the one you want to monitor:

$ sudo iftop -i wlan0

While running, you can change display options using keyboard shortcuts. For example, press h for help, n to toggle domain name resolution, or p to pause the display. You can also filter traffic based on IP addresses or subnets. For instance, to monitor traffic related to Pandora, you might use:

$ sudo iftop -F 208.85.40.20/24 -i wlan0

This allows you to focus on specific hosts and see exactly how much bandwidth they're using. Iftop supports IPv6 as well, using the -G option.

Nethogs is another great tool for quickly identifying bandwidth usage by application. Run it with:

$ sudo nethogs wlan0

The output will show the PID (process ID), user, and amount of data being sent and received. This makes it easy to identify and manage resource-heavy processes.

Vnstat is ideal for long-term network monitoring. It runs in the background and collects data without requiring constant interaction. To view statistics, simply run:

$ vnstat

You can customize the interface using options like -i to select a specific network device, or -d to view daily statistics. Vnstat also supports creating visual reports using tools like vnstati, which generates color-coded graphs for easier interpretation.

These tools are essential for anyone looking to gain better control over their network usage, whether for troubleshooting, optimizing performance, or simply understanding how their internet connection is being utilized.

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