How can I get the current network interface throughput statistics on Linux/UNIX? [closed]

Tools such as MRTG provide network throughput / bandwidth graphs for the current network utilisation on specific interfaces, such as eth0. How can I return that information at the command line on Linux/UNIX?

Preferably this would be without installing anything other than what is available on the system as standard.

Solution 1:

iftop does for network usage what top(1) does for CPU usage -- http://www.ex-parrot.com/~pdw/iftop/

I don't know how "standard" iftop is, but I was able to install it with yum install iftop on Fedora.

Solution 2:

Got sar? Likely yes if youre using RHEL/CentOS.

No need for priv, dorky binaries, hacky scripts, libpcap, etc. Win.

$ sar -n DEV 1 3
Linux 2.6.18-194.el5 (localhost.localdomain)    10/27/2010

02:40:56 PM     IFACE   rxpck/s   txpck/s   rxbyt/s   txbyt/s   rxcmp/s   txcmp/s  rxmcst/s
02:40:57 PM        lo      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00
02:40:57 PM      eth0  10700.00   1705.05 15860765.66 124250.51      0.00      0.00      0.00
02:40:57 PM      eth1      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00

02:40:57 PM     IFACE   rxpck/s   txpck/s   rxbyt/s   txbyt/s   rxcmp/s   txcmp/s  rxmcst/s
02:40:58 PM        lo      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00
02:40:58 PM      eth0   8051.00   1438.00 11849206.00 105356.00      0.00      0.00      0.00
02:40:58 PM      eth1      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00

02:40:58 PM     IFACE   rxpck/s   txpck/s   rxbyt/s   txbyt/s   rxcmp/s   txcmp/s  rxmcst/s
02:40:59 PM        lo      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00
02:40:59 PM      eth0   6093.00   1135.00 8970988.00  82942.00      0.00      0.00      0.00
02:40:59 PM      eth1      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00

Average:        IFACE   rxpck/s   txpck/s   rxbyt/s   txbyt/s   rxcmp/s   txcmp/s  rxmcst/s
Average:           lo      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00
Average:         eth0   8273.24   1425.08 12214833.44 104115.72      0.00      0.00      0.00
Average:         eth1      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00

Solution 3:

I wrote this dumb script a long time ago, it depends on nothing but Perl and Linux≥2.6:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use POSIX qw(strftime);
use Time::HiRes qw(gettimeofday usleep);

my $dev = @ARGV ? shift : 'eth0';
my $dir = "/sys/class/net/$dev/statistics";
my %stats = do {
    opendir +(my $dh), $dir;
    local @_ = readdir $dh;
    closedir $dh;
    map +($_, []), grep !/^\.\.?$/, @_;
};

if (-t STDOUT) {
    while (1) {
        print "\033[H\033[J", run();
        my ($time, $us) = gettimeofday();
        my ($sec, $min, $hour) = localtime $time;
        {
            local $| = 1;
            printf '%-31.31s: %02d:%02d:%02d.%06d%8s%8s%8s%8s',
            $dev, $hour, $min, $sec, $us, qw(1s 5s 15s 60s)
        }
        usleep($us ? 1000000 - $us : 1000000);
    }
}
else {print run()}

sub run {
    map {
        chomp (my ($stat) = slurp("$dir/$_"));
        my $line = sprintf '%-31.31s:%16.16s', $_, $stat;
        $line .= sprintf '%8.8s', int (($stat - $stats{$_}->[0]) / 1)
            if @{$stats{$_}} > 0;
        $line .= sprintf '%8.8s', int (($stat - $stats{$_}->[4]) / 5)
            if @{$stats{$_}} > 4;
        $line .= sprintf '%8.8s', int (($stat - $stats{$_}->[14]) / 15)
            if @{$stats{$_}} > 14;
        $line .= sprintf '%8.8s', int (($stat - $stats{$_}->[59]) / 60)
            if @{$stats{$_}} > 59;
        unshift @{$stats{$_}}, $stat;
        pop @{$stats{$_}} if @{$stats{$_}} > 60;
        "$line\n";
    } sort keys %stats;
}

sub slurp {
    local @ARGV = @_;
    local @_ = <>;
    @_;
}

It just reads from /sys/class/net/$dev/statistics every second, and prints out the current numbers and the average rate of change:

$ ./net_stats.pl eth0
rx_bytes                       :  74457040115259 4369093 4797875 4206554 364088
rx_packets                     :     91215713193   23120   23502   23234  17616
...
tx_bytes                       :  90798990376725 8117924 7047762 7472650 319330
tx_packets                     :     93139479736   23401   22953   23216  23171
...
eth0                           : 15:22:09.002216      1s      5s     15s     60s

                                ^ current reading  ^-------- averages ---------^