Linux – Logging bandwidth use

bandwidthlinux

In an attempt to make my life easier I want to log all bandwidth used on my server for a day, and then somehow export it. It doesn't matter much how it exports it because I can parse that stuff myself, but I need software to be able to accurately log traffic going in and out of eth0.

If anyone knows of such software, I'd be grateful if you could provide a link. I have already Googled for such things yet found nothing suitable.

Cheers.

Best Answer

My recommendation is vnStat:

vnStat is a console-based network traffic monitor for Linux and BSD that keeps a log of network traffic for the selected interface(s)

It works as advertised and seems like a good match for your needs.

To facilitate parsing you'd probably like to take a look at the --xml and --dumpdb switch in the vnstat documentation:

  • --xml : Show database content for selected interface or all interfaces in xml format. All traffic values in the output are in KiB.
  • --dumpdb : Instead of showing the database with a formatted output, this output will dump the whole database in a format that should be easy to parse with most script languages.

Feature list:

  • quick and simple to install and get running
  • gathered statistics persists through system reboots
  • can monitor multiple interfaces at the same time
  • several output options
  • summary, hourly, daily, monthly, weekly, top 10 days
  • optional png image output (using libgd)
  • months can be configured to follow billing period
  • light, minimal resource usage
  • same low cpu usage regardless of traffic
  • can be used without root permissions
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