NLOAD| MONITOR NETWORK TRAFFIC

nload is a command line tool that is used to monitor network traffic and bandwidth usage in real time. It displays inbound and outbound traffic using two graphs. While providing additional information like total transferred data and the minimum/maximum network usage. (See Below)

First, we’ll need to install the application:

Linux
$ sudo apt-get install nload$ sudo yum install nload

BSD
$ sudo pkg_add -i nload

To install it from source:
Use wget to download the latest version we sent it to downloads, but you can send it to /tmp or whichever directory you would like.

cd /downloads
wget http://www.roland-riegel.de/nload/nload-0.7.4.tar.gz

Then you will need to extract the and then go to the nload directory. If you are unsure of what the file name is used a *. Click here for more information on what an asterisk means. (aka Wildcards)

tar xvf nload-0.7.4.tar.gz

cd nload*

After you are done extracting the file and successfully navigated to the directory. Run ./configure.

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Running the program, is simple, to start nload type “nload” in a terminal session.
You will notice several things, each graph has;
Curr = Current traffic
Avg = Average amount of traffic
Min = Minimum amount of traffic
Max = Maximum amount of traffic
Ttl = Total amount of traffic

Once the command has been executed and the application is running, there are a few shortcuts and options you can use with/within the program.

ArrowRight, ArrowDown, PageDown, Enter, Tab –Switch the display to the next network device, or when started with the -m option, it will display the next page of devices

ArrowLeft, ArrowUp, PageUp –Switch the display to the previous network device, or when started with the -m option, it will display the previous page of devices

F2 –Show the option window

F5 –Save current settings to the user’s config file

F6 –

Reload settings from the config files or Ctrl+C to Quit nload

Options:

• -a period – Sets the length in seconds of the time window for average calculation. The default is 300.
• -m – Show multiple devices at a time; do not show the traffic graphs.
• -i max_scaling -Specifies the 100% mark in kBit/s of the graph indicating the incoming bandwidth usage. Ignored if max_scaling is 0 or the switch -m is given. The default value for max_scaling is 10240.
• -o max_scaling – Same as -i but for the graph indicating the outgoing bandwidth usage.
• -t interval – Determines the refresh interval of the display in milliseconds. The default value of interval is 500.
• -u h|H|b|B|k|K|m|M|g|G – Sets the type of unit used for the display of traffic numbers. h means human readable, b = Bit/s, k = kBit/s, m = MBit/s and g = GBit/s. The upper case letters mean the corresponding units in Bytes, instead of bits. So, B = Bytes/s, K = KB/s , M = MB/s, and G = GB/s. The default is kilobits or K.
• -U h|H|b|B|k|K|m|M|g|G – Same as -u, but for an amount of data, e.g. Bit, kByte, GBit etc. The default is M or megabytes.
• devices – Network devices to use. The default display all auto-detected devices.