Keep track of your network usage using vnstat

Since I started using my mobile connection to connect to Internet (now and then), I felt the need to keep track of my network usage (since I only have 500mb a month, and my provider doesn't seem to provide the usage on a website). And of course, I'm talking Linux OS ;-)

I stumbled upon this nice software, vnstat, http://humdi.net/vnstat, which really suits my needs.

Unfortunately, the version that comes with Ubuntu is quite old, so I was suggested in the forum, to download and compile from sources the latest version from the website.

After unpackaged the tarbal, it's just a matter of running make install (as a superuser)

sudo make install
Installing vnStat...
Installing config to /etc/vnstat.conf
install -d -m 755 /usr/bin /usr/sbin /usr/share/man/man1 /usr/share/man/man5 /var/lib/vnstat
install -s -m 755 src/vnstat /usr/bin
install -s -m 755 src/vnstatd /usr/sbin
install -m 644 man/vnstat.1 /usr/share/man/man1
install -m 644 man/vnstatd.1 /usr/share/man/man1
install -m 644 man/vnstat.conf.5 /usr/share/man/man5

Then, the first time, you need to create the database; since I'm interested in my ppp0 mobile connection, I did

sudo vnstat --force -u -i ppp0

Before starting, I prefered to tweak the configuration a bit, so I created $HOME/.vnstatrc and I added this option

# interface specific limits
# example 8Mbit limit for eth0 (remove # to activate):
#MaxBWeth0 8
MaxBWppp0 8

This seemed to help getting rid of those annoying 4gb spikes. (On a side note, I often use the application that came with my Internet Huawei card, which often, very often, suffer from those 4gb spikes which definitely spoil the statistics of network usage, that's why I had to find a better solution to keep track of that.)

Now you can setup the vnstat daemon so that it starts automatically when the computer starts

sudo cp examples/init.d/ubuntu/vnstat /etc/init.d/
sudo chmod 755 /etc/init.d/vnstat
sudo update-rc.d vnstat defaults

And if you want to start it right now

sudo /etc/init.d/vnstat start

Every 5 minutes the daemon updates the database with the statistics (of course you can configure many things, see the vnstat documentation).

You can see the current statistics

bettini@bettini-laptop:~$ vnstat
Database updated: Sat Oct 10 15:37:54 2009

  ppp0 since 04.09.09

         rx:  292.90 MiB      tx:  104.48 MiB     total:  397.38 MiB

  monthly
                    rx      |     tx      |    total    |   avg. rate
    ------------------------+-------------+-------------+---------------
      Sep '09    243.74 MiB |   88.89 MiB |  332.62 MiB |    1.05 kbit/s
      Oct '09     49.16 MiB |   15.59 MiB |   64.76 MiB |    0.64 kbit/s
    ------------------------+-------------+-------------+---------------
    estimated       157 MiB |      48 MiB |     205 MiB |

  daily
                    rx      |     tx      |    total    |   avg. rate
    ------------------------+-------------+-------------+---------------
    yesterday       329 KiB |     172 KiB |     501 KiB |    0.05 kbit/s
        today      7.91 MiB |    2.25 MiB |   10.16 MiB |    1.48 kbit/s
    ------------------------+-------------+-------------+---------------
    estimated        10 MiB |       3 MiB |      13 MiB |

The daily statistics

bettini@bettini-laptop:~$ vnstat -d

ppp0  /  daily

        day         rx      |     tx      |    total    |   avg. rate
    ------------------------+-------------+-------------+---------------
       04.09.      8.96 MiB |    6.99 MiB |   15.94 MiB |    1.51 kbit/s
       05.09.     12.05 MiB |    4.37 MiB |   16.42 MiB |    1.56 kbit/s
       06.09.      9.21 MiB |    4.14 MiB |   13.35 MiB |    1.27 kbit/s
       08.09.     25.17 MiB |    9.68 MiB |   34.86 MiB |    3.30 kbit/s
       09.09.      6.64 MiB |    2.74 MiB |    9.38 MiB |    0.89 kbit/s
       10.09.     22.53 MiB |    7.88 MiB |   30.41 MiB |    2.88 kbit/s
       12.09.     10.58 MiB |    4.64 MiB |   15.22 MiB |    1.44 kbit/s
       13.09.      5.13 MiB |    2.07 MiB |    7.21 MiB |    0.68 kbit/s
       14.09.      7.67 MiB |    2.18 MiB |    9.86 MiB |    0.93 kbit/s
       18.09.     12.54 MiB |    2.31 MiB |   14.85 MiB |    1.41 kbit/s
       19.09.     16.28 MiB |    5.14 MiB |   21.42 MiB |    2.03 kbit/s
       20.09.      4.76 MiB |    1.47 MiB |    6.24 MiB |    0.59 kbit/s
       22.09.     11.99 MiB |    4.29 MiB |   16.27 MiB |    1.54 kbit/s
       23.09.     17.75 MiB |    8.66 MiB |   26.41 MiB |    2.50 kbit/s
       24.09.      8.80 MiB |    2.94 MiB |   11.74 MiB |    1.11 kbit/s
       26.09.     15.72 MiB |    4.99 MiB |   20.71 MiB |    1.96 kbit/s
       27.09.       383 KiB |     108 KiB |     491 KiB |    0.05 kbit/s
       29.09.     23.36 MiB |    6.18 MiB |   29.55 MiB |    2.80 kbit/s
       30.09.     24.23 MiB |    8.09 MiB |   32.32 MiB |    3.06 kbit/s
       01.10.      9.90 MiB |    5.62 MiB |   15.52 MiB |    1.47 kbit/s
       04.10.     22.22 MiB |    5.15 MiB |   27.37 MiB |    2.60 kbit/s
       05.10.      8.81 MiB |    2.40 MiB |   11.21 MiB |    1.06 kbit/s
       09.10.       329 KiB |     172 KiB |     501 KiB |    0.05 kbit/s
       10.10.      7.91 MiB |    2.25 MiB |   10.16 MiB |    1.48 kbit/s
    ------------------------+-------------+-------------+---------------
    estimated        10 MiB |       3 MiB |      13 MiB |

for months

bettini@bettini-laptop:~$ vnstat -m

ppp0  /  monthly

     month         rx      |      tx      |    total     |   avg. rate
   ------------------------+--------------+--------------+---------------
    Sep '09     243.74 MiB |    88.89 MiB |   332.62 MiB |    1.05 kbit/s
    Oct '09      49.25 MiB |    15.68 MiB |    64.93 MiB |    0.64 kbit/s
   ------------------------+--------------+--------------+---------------
   estimated       157 MiB |       48 MiB |      205 MiB |

and so on.

Very nice! :-)